Home Is Where the Heart Is
Home. This little word in its best definition holds so many memories and meanings for each of us gathered here today. This little word, home, conjures up for us warm memories of days gone by, family, celebrations, hard work to keep farms up and running, memories of holidays, birthdays, weddings, and homecomings from college, war, military service, or to the home church. Home certainly is where the heart is. I have lived and worked all over the world in my military and civilian careers but I keep coming back to North Carolina, my home. My heart has always been rooted in North Carolina.
Home is where many of us here today first learned to trust and love. Home is where we first learned about attending church and of the love of Jesus for us. Home is where we learned about family relationships. Home is where we learned to respect others, to obey our parents, to be kind and helpful to others, and to begin to understand what is and would be required of us as we grew, went to school, interacted with others, went off to college or learned a trade that we might become productive members of society. Yes, home has been one of the things that have shaped us into who we are. Home has served to be the starting point for building our character.
My first memories of home are fractured in my memory. I try to think back to how it was but most of the details have become clouded over the ensuing years but I can remember a few things vividly. I remember growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in Pineville, North Carolina. I remember playing with the black sharecropper’s sons and daughters in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. I remember running the cotton and corn fields with them, playing, working, sweating, and getting worn out with them each day only to come home and do it all over again the next day after school.
I can remember an old, un-insulated two bedroom shotgun style house, heated with a pot bellied stove; dad stoking the stove with a big hunk of coal in the morning so that it wouldn’t be so cold when I and my brothers would rise in the morning to prepare for school. I remember on cold winter mornings it was so cold in the house that the windows were coated with ice, inside, and every breath stung because of it being so very cold inside. I remember that once dad got the stove heated up that the ice on the windows inside of the house began to melt and mama and daddy would run to get the mop bucket and old threadbare towels to clean up all of the water that was running in the floors while I and my brothers would sit in the kitchen by the open oven door having our usual breakfast of Cream of Wheat or oatmeal and toast.
I remember old hand-me-down jeans, elastic waist, or bib overalls with multiple patches on the knees and back pockets and home made thick flannel shirts that stored so much static electricity that you couldn’t touch a doorknob without an arc of electricity jumping from your finger to the knob, not just once but it seemed each and every time. This was double trouble when mom would insist I wear corduroy pants.
I remember mama giving us our quarters for lunch and a nickel for popsicles or extra milk at school then bundling us up and walking us out to the road and waiting with us until the school bus came and picked us up. Mom would then get ready for work at Cone Mills while daddy would go off to Reichold Chemicals to his job as a lab technician. Home has some warm memories for me and we could all probably share similar stories about our early years at home before we went out into the world to forge our paths in the world.
Home really is where the heart is and when most of us, if not all of us, think about home, we think of the place where we grew up, a house, a neighborhood, friends around us, or a geographical location but I can remember very clearly the day I came to realize that home is much more than these wonderful things. I remember clearly the day when my Sunday school teacher gave us a new definition of home and where it was located. Our teacher told our class that our true home was not where we were born or where we grew up, that our home didn’t depend upon the state we lived in nor the country of our birth but our home, our true home, really was not to be found on this earth.
Our teacher began to tell us of a home far above the clouds, angles that flew around up there, the river made of crystal, the living water that flowed from the throne of God where it was always sunny and bright because it was where God, our heavenly father lived, streets paved with gold, gates made of precious stones, a place where there was no more sickness, no more pain, no more worry, and that death could not live there because there was only joy and happiness. It was a place where we could work all day and never get tired and that heavenly choirs sang praises all the time. You know, thinking back I always wanted to sing in that choir She began to tell us that this home that waited for us had homes already built and waiting for us and that they were free because they had already been paid for. She began to tell us of the one who paid it all so we could live in this glorious place forever.
She began to tell us about Jesus, God’s only son that came to earth as a little baby, born on a stable in a little town called Bethlehem, to live among us. She told us that as this little baby grew up he and his family had to run away into Egypt for a while because the king of Israel wanted to kill the baby. She told us that as this child grew he surprised the teachers with his wisdom and knowledge of God’s kingdom. She told us that when he became a man and started to teach the people about Heaven and God’s plans for us that the church leaders and the rulers of the land became angry and had him put to death thinking that that would end the message but the grave couldn’t hold him, death couldn’t keep him, and that he went back to heaven to be with his father, our Heavenly father, to prepare homes for us if we would follow his teachings.
She told us that heaven is our real home and that everything we do or say should be with this in mind. She told us that we should never forget what God did for us and that is when she taught us a scripture verse. This verse has become my favorite verse in the Bible because it tells of God’s great love, mercy, and grace for us. It tells us of the sacrifice God made for us. It tells us of our real home if we will accept the free gift that God has offered to each of us. That little verse is John 3:16. Could you repeat this verse with me this morning?
Our scriptures today tell us that we should set our minds upon the higher things of God. They tell us that we should put our focus upon treasure in heaven instead of the things of this dark and dying world because where our treasure is our minds will be there too. Home truly is where the heart is. I ask you today, where is your heart today? Where are you storing your treasure? Is it on earth or is it in heaven? Are your thoughts on the things of this world or on the things of heaven? Do you know the Savior? Are you aware that he is the gate whereby we all must enter? Do you know that there is only one way to your true home?
There is a gospel song that I love to sing. It’s called “Home is Where the Heart Is.
They say home is where the heart is. I’m longing to be on my way. The struggles and strife of this mortal are growing old. I have no reservations about leaving this world since I asked him into my heart. Now I’m on my way. Don’t ask me to stay. Thank God I’m going home.
I can almost see heaven. I can almost see home. I can hear angels singing around the foot of his throne. O the father is waiting to welcome me home. I can almost see heaven and I’m just about home.
If you are here today and do not know him or if you would like to rededicate your life to him, he will meet you at this altar. He is here and he is waiting. He is gentle, gracious, merciful, and kind ready to forgive and forget, and his love for us has no end. Come to him today if for no other reason than to tell him that you love him and to thank him for the gift of eternal life that he offers. He loves you unconditionally and he has been looking for you long before you were looking for him.
Amen
