Home is where the laundry is

 

Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! Psalm 90:1 (NLT)

Home. What a loaded word. Heavy as a soaked Turkish towel. Casually grab it before the spin cycle finishes and you’ll lose a fingernail.

No one’s home is perfect. Some qualify as bona fide toxic. But what is home supposed to be? Home is where you’re safe, where you rest. Or is it? Since home is where we share space, resources, and responsibilities with the most important people in our lives, it can be anything but restful. The real you comes out at home. The best you, the worst you, and those versions of everyone else live at home. They carry the burdens of life, sometimes lifting sometimes dangling, together as one. Safe? How about vulnerable. Restful? More like exhausting. This towel needs a round or two on extra high.

I asked a few friends, “what does home mean to you?” Their answers had a theme - familiar. For better or worse, you know what to expect at home. Even unpredictable, chaotic homes breed familiarity. They engender fear & self-preservation with relentless consistency. The unknown is uncomfortable if not downright terrifying. What if it doesn’t have to be? Doesn’t have to be terrifying or even all that unknown? I think Psalm 90 holds out just such an invitation. “Come make your home with me. I’m always here, and I’m always God.”

Lord, through all the generations,
  you have been our home!
Before the mountains were created, 

  before you made the earth and the world,
  you are God, without beginning or end. 

Psalm 90:1-2 (NLT)

Talk about consistency - unlike the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ nature of this physical world.

Our days may come to seventy years,
  or eighty, if our strength endures; 

yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, 

  for they quickly pass, and we fly away. 

Psalm 90:8 (NLT)

We have an eternal home with the author of the universe, the tailor of every soul within it. We are invited to share space, resources, and responsibilities with the Creator, who stays the same from age to age. Jesus made a way for us to move in with the ultimate landlord. My mind cannot comprehend such a gift! My heart can scarcely accept it. I so quickly rush to what’s familiar rather than redefine it. Not today, though. Today I have a choice.

Today I set the cycle on bulky. I wring out the weight and wait for the warmth. God is good. God is home. Today and every day, he welcomes me into his arms through Christ. He welcomes you, too. Come home.