Altar Call – Opelika-Auburn News
August 24, 2008
A home is a blessing we should not take for
granted
Watching old people break up housekeeping is never easy for
me. It saddens me to see people uprooted from their home and placed in a nursing
home even when that seems the best thing to do.
Of course something has to be done when people get so old
they can no longer take care of themselves. I just wish there was some gentler,
kinder way to remove people from their home and put them in an institution. Only
rarely can children find a way to allow aged parents to live in their own home
until their death.
Most of us feel about home like my friend Mary does. I
asked her one day if she given any thought to giving
up her home and moving into one of the lovely “assisted living” homes in her
city. Instantly she replied, “No sir; I will not leave this home until they
carry me out with my toes turned up!”
Like Mary I have decided to live in my present home until I
die. I do not want to die in a hospital. Hospitals are a blessing, especially
in
Home has always been important to me. I was born in a home
my father built with his own hands. I lived in that home until I left for
college at age 18. Our son Steve and his family live in that home today; he
remodeled it after my parents died. They lived in it until their death.
Most preachers live in many houses during their ministry.
My wife and I lived in more than twenty different homes during our pastoral
service. Wanting during those years to have a place called “home,” we built a
cabin near my dad’s place in 1960. The cabin finally became our home, and we
have been remodeling it now for 48 years.
Those of us who have a home should not take it for granted.
I remind myself often to give thanks for our home. Millions of people have no
home. There may be as many as one billion people in the world today who are
homeless. There are more than three million homeless people in the
Over the years I have visited hundreds of people in nursing
homes. Without a doubt the most frequent comment made to me by nursing home
residents is simply this, “I want to go home” or “Please take me home.” I would
not want to live in a country that did not provide senior housing like nursing
homes and assisted living homes. And we have some truly wonderful nursing homes
in
But there is evidently an innate desire in the human heart
for home.
If we are not at home, we
want to go home. The old saying, “There is no place like home,” has been
uttered many times by anyone who has ever had a home. Perhaps God planted the
desire for home in our hearts. There is a sense in which God Himself is “home.”
So the human spirit is restless until it finds its way home to God.
One of my favorite songs is “Going Home.” It touches deep
places in my heart. In these days I am profoundly thankful for the home where I
hope to live until I die. But the songwriter expresses feelings that I share
about the home where I am going when my traveling days are done. You may like
it too:
Going home, going
home, I’m just going home. Quiet light, some still day, I’m just going home. It’s
not far, just close by, through an open door. Work all done, care laid by, going to fear no more. Mother’s
there expecting me, Father’s waiting, too. Lots of folk gathered there,
all the friends I knew. Nothing’s lost, all’s gain. No
more fret nor pain. No more stumbling on the way. No more longing for the day. Going to roam no more. Morning star lights the way, restless
dreams all done. Shadows gone, break of day. Real life begun.
That
is a wonderful thought: Real life begins when we get home! + + +