The feeling of "home" is not a simple one.
Where do you feel "at home"?
When we really think about it, it has many levels. It has to do with immediate surroundings. It has also to do with neighbours and neighbourhoods. It is God who certainly keeps us no matter where we live, of course, and there's no denying that. In that sense, it really SHOULDN'T matter where we live.
Of course, most of us don't even have the luxury of thinking about where we'd like to live, on this earth. Where our temporary "home on earth" is or will be isn't something we always get to choose. Often, most of us don't even think about where we live. We just live where we live.
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"the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."
"And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
Sometimes life on earth is merely just that - life on mere old earth. The temporal, impermanent, itinerant, transient feel of it permeates everything. The feeling of it being just a passage into something beyond cannot be shaken.
Abraham had been called out of his ancestral home without much preamble. He actually was a man who lived in tents all his life, never putting down roots. God had actually said to him, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you."
If Abraham had liked, he might have just said, "Oh well, it's all mine anyway. So let me put down roots, build myself something nice, peacefully grow a family, take my ease." It is very instructive that he never ever thought this to himself. He lived in tents all through. He, strangely, felt, even though the land was his, that he was an alien and a stranger on earth, no matter where he lived. He was looking for some place that would never change, some place where he could actually live forever. In fact, when we look inside ourselves, we look for the same qualities in a place we would call "home". And Abraham knew there could never be "home" on earth.
And the writer of Hebrews was absolutely right to say what he said about people like Abraham:
"And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
We spend most of our time here on earth putting down roots. That's because we have closed our eyes to looking beyond earth. Everything about earth screams out to us, "TEMPORAL!!!" But we still refuse to look up beyond the horizon.....to the land beyond. Abraham was a man who lived entirely for the land beyond earth.
I'm not saying we must not build homes and houses, or grow families. I'm just saying it shouldn't be the only thing we do.
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For a time, Abraham did live for a long time in one single place. In fact, he got so attached to it that he even came back and bought land there, to bury his wife Sarah there. The Bible introduces this wonderful place for us for the first time in Genesis 13:18:
"So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD."
The King James Version calls this place the "plain of Mamre".
Abraham felt at home at this place much more than in any other place he lived in. In Genesis 18, The LORD appeared to Abraham at Mamre as he "sat in the tent door in the heat of the day" (Genesis 18:1); and this was the first time The LORD spoke to him about the birth of Isaac, the son of the Promise.
Mamre, traditionally, was a place between the Bethel and Ai of those days; Abraham did not feel at home with the Canaanites who lived in these cities, and he just wanted to stay apart. Besides, I do feel he wanted a place which afforded gentle shade, with the only trees around for miles and miles in a very hot plain. The trees at Mamre are legendary; there is still a gnarled old oak that the Israelis call "Abraham's oak", very near where Mamre was supposed to have been. The trees were said to be the terebinth and the oak.
The picture of the "great trees" is refreshing when one thinks of the phrase in Genesis 18:1, "the heat of the day". The "cool of the day" refreshing of Genesis 3:8 had now come full circle - the wages of the fall - to "the heat of the day".
Abraham appears to have felt the loneliness and the isolation of being an alien and stranger, both literally and figuratively, in his wanderings. Loneliness and isolation have far deeper moorings in us when we keenly feel the effect of being strangers on earth, where we can call no one friend and no place home. Even while we look ahead to the heavenly city, the weariness of wandering and frugal living, and the terror of not being secure shatter our peace and take away our repose.
For Abraham, on temporal earth, there still was a safe place he could go to, to find refreshing and life-green, where The LORD ministered to him - and this was Mamre.
*********************************************************************************
I find that throughout our lives (and I can testify in my own case), God provides refreshing little oases on the way. It might be a place, or a person, or even just portions of the Word, sometimes even a song. Whatever it is, it becomes Mamre to us. That's what safe places are meant to do - provide the temporary refuge with all the comforts of being near The LORD, fully able to tap into His infinite resources for our needs. God somehow knows we need these safe places.
Let us come aside to our retreat day after day, within the garden where He comes to meet us....or stand at the entrance to the tent, "in the heat of the day", as Abraham did. And our God will come and refresh us.
Where do you feel "at home"?
When we really think about it, it has many levels. It has to do with immediate surroundings. It has also to do with neighbours and neighbourhoods. It is God who certainly keeps us no matter where we live, of course, and there's no denying that. In that sense, it really SHOULDN'T matter where we live.
Of course, most of us don't even have the luxury of thinking about where we'd like to live, on this earth. Where our temporary "home on earth" is or will be isn't something we always get to choose. Often, most of us don't even think about where we live. We just live where we live.
*********************************************************************************
"the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground."
"And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
Sometimes life on earth is merely just that - life on mere old earth. The temporal, impermanent, itinerant, transient feel of it permeates everything. The feeling of it being just a passage into something beyond cannot be shaken.
Abraham had been called out of his ancestral home without much preamble. He actually was a man who lived in tents all his life, never putting down roots. God had actually said to him, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you."
If Abraham had liked, he might have just said, "Oh well, it's all mine anyway. So let me put down roots, build myself something nice, peacefully grow a family, take my ease." It is very instructive that he never ever thought this to himself. He lived in tents all through. He, strangely, felt, even though the land was his, that he was an alien and a stranger on earth, no matter where he lived. He was looking for some place that would never change, some place where he could actually live forever. In fact, when we look inside ourselves, we look for the same qualities in a place we would call "home". And Abraham knew there could never be "home" on earth.
And the writer of Hebrews was absolutely right to say what he said about people like Abraham:
"And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country - a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."
We spend most of our time here on earth putting down roots. That's because we have closed our eyes to looking beyond earth. Everything about earth screams out to us, "TEMPORAL!!!" But we still refuse to look up beyond the horizon.....to the land beyond. Abraham was a man who lived entirely for the land beyond earth.
I'm not saying we must not build homes and houses, or grow families. I'm just saying it shouldn't be the only thing we do.
*********************************************************************************
For a time, Abraham did live for a long time in one single place. In fact, he got so attached to it that he even came back and bought land there, to bury his wife Sarah there. The Bible introduces this wonderful place for us for the first time in Genesis 13:18:
"So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD."
The King James Version calls this place the "plain of Mamre".
Abraham felt at home at this place much more than in any other place he lived in. In Genesis 18, The LORD appeared to Abraham at Mamre as he "sat in the tent door in the heat of the day" (Genesis 18:1); and this was the first time The LORD spoke to him about the birth of Isaac, the son of the Promise.
Mamre, traditionally, was a place between the Bethel and Ai of those days; Abraham did not feel at home with the Canaanites who lived in these cities, and he just wanted to stay apart. Besides, I do feel he wanted a place which afforded gentle shade, with the only trees around for miles and miles in a very hot plain. The trees at Mamre are legendary; there is still a gnarled old oak that the Israelis call "Abraham's oak", very near where Mamre was supposed to have been. The trees were said to be the terebinth and the oak.
The picture of the "great trees" is refreshing when one thinks of the phrase in Genesis 18:1, "the heat of the day". The "cool of the day" refreshing of Genesis 3:8 had now come full circle - the wages of the fall - to "the heat of the day".
Abraham appears to have felt the loneliness and the isolation of being an alien and stranger, both literally and figuratively, in his wanderings. Loneliness and isolation have far deeper moorings in us when we keenly feel the effect of being strangers on earth, where we can call no one friend and no place home. Even while we look ahead to the heavenly city, the weariness of wandering and frugal living, and the terror of not being secure shatter our peace and take away our repose.
For Abraham, on temporal earth, there still was a safe place he could go to, to find refreshing and life-green, where The LORD ministered to him - and this was Mamre.
*********************************************************************************
I find that throughout our lives (and I can testify in my own case), God provides refreshing little oases on the way. It might be a place, or a person, or even just portions of the Word, sometimes even a song. Whatever it is, it becomes Mamre to us. That's what safe places are meant to do - provide the temporary refuge with all the comforts of being near The LORD, fully able to tap into His infinite resources for our needs. God somehow knows we need these safe places.
Let us come aside to our retreat day after day, within the garden where He comes to meet us....or stand at the entrance to the tent, "in the heat of the day", as Abraham did. And our God will come and refresh us.
