Home Anywhere

And I’ve seen by the highways on a million exit ramps

Those two-legged memorials to the laws of happenstance

Waiting for four-wheeled messiahs to take them home again

But I’m home anywhere if you are where I am

--Rich Mullins, “Here in America”

Of the many kingdom paradoxes given us by Jesus, a key one is the expansion of life by reducing it. It is foolishness in the eyes of our culture to have no place to lay one’s head or to “let the dead bury their own dead” (Mt. 8:18-22). By cultural standards, an expansive abode and an extensive network are part of the definition of “the good life.” But Jesus, as usual, redefines the good life by bringing it in line with the kingdom life.

The kingdom life is not defined by where one lays one’s head or by family status or connections. Instead, by reducing to the point of eliminating these (and other) boundaries, our lives expand to find home and family with God. As we let go of our possessions and connections, our embrace widens to the invitations of Jesus to “inherit the earth” and to be “sons and daughters of God.”

Of course this likely doesn’t mean that we move onto the street and alienate our family and friends. On the contrary, we become better stewards of possessions and relationships when we let them go to the disposal and cultivation of the Maker and Father of all. Then we learn to work alongside the Master to till the soil of our lives and our place with no thought for our own gain, only to find that we end up gaining everything. We learn that “I’m home anywhere if you are where I am.”

We must look hard at the lines we’ve drawn and, in God’s strength and wisdom, begin to erase them…that he might truly be our God “in whom we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).