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Where is home?
‘Where is your home?’ I had just been asked.
I paused for longer than casual conversation normally allows, as I searched for a thoroughly satisfactory reply (as silenced as the peeping rabbits by Mole of The Wind in the Willows, fresh emergent from his winter quarters, and jeering them with ‘Onion Sauce! Onion Sauce!’)
My interrogator, my neighbour in the pew with whom I was filling the minutes before our service began, looked bemused.
‘Where do you live?’ is the usual question, and the reply is more readily at hand. Physically we have an address. Mentally we have found a new domicile which we love, and my passport now bristles with Residents Permits and Returning Visas to prove it. But emotionally? Alone with Bron, our private conversation betrays the truth: ‘Next time we go home…’, or ‘Back home we’d pick it up at Waitrose…’ They’re ploughing now, at home...’
From which shop to buy vegetables to the best local accountant, everyday living revolves around personal and largely unwritten almanacs of the best place to find things. A new country has one dependent for the information on the long-sufferance of still-too-new frenzneighbours. But either the Kiwis are a super-tolerant lot, or God has surrounded us with the most gracious of them. And the adventure of discovery is still strong, despite a few expensive trials and errors.
But my question still hung in the air, as we turned to respond to the call to worship. And of course my discomfiture was soon resolved in Jesus; in the knowledge that as believers, there is nowhere on earth that we can really call home, for we ‘have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God…. to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven… to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.’ (Hebrews 12:22-24) Like the saints paraded in Hebrews 11, this side of our home-calling we will not see the fullness of what we so earnestly long for. We are citizens of another country, heavenly beings still warped into earthly calices, bursting for freedom.
Meanwhile in the mundanity of the less-real world, we garden, fix bathrooms, entertain or (seemingly more often) are entertained, and are becoming increasingly involved in the minutiae of church life. Bron has been helping prepare the great Christmas show, while I have been asked to help set up a computerised rota for church volunteers – no small task when 1200 have 1200 different agendas.
NZ Ministry
Nor have we been idle in ministry – I have been teaching at our Bible College – a first for me and a real delight. The students are hungry as wolves. One morning, with no little trepidation we sent them into the streets to share the gospel. For many this was well beyond their personal cringe level, but they went with big hearts and open minds. In two hours they led ten people to Christ, and they were quite blown away! ‘We never believed it would be possible!’ admitted one. ‘It actually works!’ another cried. They have been buzzing with the testimonies ever since. One pair was so ‘hooked’ they have been out several times since, winning more, one of whom wants to sign up for Bible College next year!
I have also preached on several other occasions, and have seen several people healed as we have ministered to them. God is good!
December 2006 news
In our spare time we have been busy refurbishing the bathroom, and learning about NZ building regulations! John’s entry into cabinet making stands proudly on the right…
