Where is home?

Recently I read the book Homecoming by Cynthia Voight.  In the book the 4 Tillerman children aged 13, 10, 9 and 6 are abandoned by there mentally ill mother.  They were on their way to their Aunt Cilla's house, so they continue their journey on foot hoping that they will be able to live with their 'great' aunt. Upon arrival at the house they find their aunt has passed away and her daughter Eunice is now living alone in the house.  Dicey, the oldest child, decides that Eunice's house is not the best place for her family, so they set out once again to find their grandmother they only just found existed.


Throughout their journeys Dice plays with the idea of what is home? One night when her family sleeps in a graveyard she reads the inscription on one of the head stones: “Home is the hunter, home from the hill, and the sailor home from the sea.” From this inscription Dicey concludes that no one is really home until they are dead and “[i]t was an awful thought.”

But, where is home?



For many of our students at ICSB this concept is just as hard to define as for Dicey. They haven’t been ripped away from where they called home on the account of their ill parents, but many of them move from place to place every three years or they may have lived in Hungary their whole life, but some people may still want them to call the United States (or where their citizenship is held) their ‘home.’  Even into adulthood some will with struggle with the question of where are you from? 

Perhaps as Christians Dicey’s idea that they are not really home until we die is true?  It is only upon our death or the return of Christ that we will be home with Christ. Our bodies and this earth are only temporary. Our true home is in heaven and this is not an awful though at all for those who love and worship Jesus Christ.

Where is home for you?