Makes you think about where you have been, what you've accomplished, where you are heading. The packing is rushed, but the unpacking takes several months, and it usually takes a little longer to feel truly at home in a new place. And then we have two Bosnian refugee families the church is helping relocate to Austin. They have lost almost everything they took a lifetime to build and got here with nothing more than what they could carry on the plane. Home, of course, is less about place than about relationship.
Home is about feeling at home in a particular space with particular people.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge is to feel at home in your own skin, to be at home with yourself, for if you don't find that level of inner peace and confidence, you will never feel at home with anyone else. This, too, is a spiritual journey, and you cannot make a spiritual journey without traveling with God. Think of that image for a moment. Being Jewish is a way of keeping house with God. Most of our Christian rituals happen here, at the church, which makes it easier somehow for us to leave God at church and not realize the holiness of our homes.