There’s No Place Like Home

Our friends Kerry and Julian have been constructing a room in their loft. They planned it carefully; builders did the structural work about a year ago; Julian’s been busy gradually doing an excellent job completing it…

It’s their house – made of bricks, wood… and stuff. It’s their home where their children grew up, where family and friends are welcome, where people live together and love together.

There’s no place like home.

In ‘The Beekeeper of Aleppo’ Nuri and his wife Afra have a lovely home in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo.  The war makes them home-less. Together with other refugees they walk away and approach a village. People watch them…

‘…their eyes wide with wonder as if they were seeing a travelling circus… I realised afterwards that the look I had mistaken for wonder was actually fear, and I imagined swapping places with them, seeing hundreds of people battered by war heading to an unknown future…’

There’s no place like home.

Helen’s Dad has dementia; he’s recently moved to a ‘care home’; she wants it to be just that – caring people providing Dad with a home.

Steve said that he felt ‘at home’ at our ‘Men’s Shed’; he has great conversations and gets on with everybody.

Isla sees ‘The Seagull Theatre’ was her second home; she feels valued, cared for, involved and learnt from lots of lovely people.

Gordon regards church as his spiritual home; together with friends he’d known for many years, he speaks to and worships his God.

There’s no place like home.

As a child I learnt about my ‘heavenly home’. I sung, ‘This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through’. I had pictures in my head; I believed in my heart.

As I’ve got older ‘heavenly home’ questions become more important. I understand it less but believe it more. Jesus described ‘his Father’s House’ and ‘preparing a place for you’. This isn’t a house; it’s a home.

There’s no place like home.