No Place Like Home
All who follow Jesus will be accompanying him in this restless, homeless wandering (p70)
Jesus answer in Matthew 8:20 is in reply to someone telling Jesus they will follow him wherever he goes. Jesus implies that he has no home on earth – that is what we are joining when we follow him.
Perhaps that makes some sense for me of why my favourite journeys are not in any sense to places one would consider homeward bound – for to me, wherever I live, where I live now is home, but it has no greater pull in me than that. I guess those favourite journeys have a more permanent pull on my heart and life.
A Wandering Jew
The pull in following Jesus is to be where he is. To not have too deep roots. To be ready to go. We can invest a lot of time and energy in our homes and keeping them looking lovely, the rash of home improvement programmes and programmes to find the “perfect” home show us that. Perhaps as God’s people, as Jesus’ followers, we are called to hold our homes much more loosely than that?
This passage reminds me of the word of a hymn (which has copyright, so I’ll just give you one verse):
‘Foxes have places to go’, The Lord said, ‘But I’ve no home here below,’ The Lord said ‘So if you want to be with me all your days, Keep up the moving and travelling on, You’re the people of God, So every day, We’re on our way, For we’re a travelling, wandering race, We’re the people of God. Estelle WhiteAs God’s people we are called to be free to go, ready to follow him. Are we ready to follow him wherever he goes?
These thoughts are reflecting on Stanley Spencer’s painting The Foxes Have Holes (seen here).
This year for Lent, I am reading Christ in the Wilderness by Bishop Stephen Cottrell, published by SPCK, reflecting on Stanley Spencer’s paintings of that title.
I’m not necessarily going to blog every day on it, just when something leaps out at me – and they will be thoughts rather than full blog posts
Pam's Perambulation 