Happy weekend, friends! First, I’ve been playing with the appearance and layout of this blog. Please let me know if you have any thoughts about the changes. The idea is to make it a little more personal, but to still retain a “professional” interface with the blogosphere.

Today the idea of “home” has been front and center in my thinking. That’s probably why I chose to include an image of the new Maul Hall in the header. To be honest, both Rebekah and I have been struggling with homesickness a little this week – or maybe more a feeling of displacement.

It’s not that we doubt for a minute that Wake Forest is where we’re supposed to be; it’s just that we’ve lost so much in terms of the deep relationships we had nurtured in Brandon, and we haven’t really even started to get to know people here yet.

AT HOME WITH GOD: Then there were the following two scriptures; they came hard and fast, one after the other, Thursday and Friday this week. Read them aloud, and listen:

Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.  (John 14:23)

Even if my father and mother left me all alone,
the Lord would take me in.
 Lord, teach me your way… (Psalm 127)

Home, of course, is where your heart is. But my heart is torn; it’s in two places and coming to terms with that is nowhere near easy at the moment.

GOD’S INVITATION: But there’s also a spiritual consistency about the idea of home that helps us tremendously when we’re able to be still and understand. And this is the assurance: that my heart – and Rebekah’s heart too – is at home with God, at home in God, at home because of Jesus. That is the ultimate end of God’s invitation to become a Follower of The Living Way; it’s the invitation to be at home with God.

The seeds of this idea were sown all the way back in Genesis. Listen to the way the writer describes the fellowship, the at-home-ness, of the Godhead:

Then God said, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.”

   God created humanity in God’s own image,
        in the divine image God created them,
            male and female God created them. (Genesis: 26-27)

Did you notice? God said let us make humanity in our image. That’s “us” and “our;” that’s a plural designation. What we’re invited to do (when we’re invited to become a part of God’s great family), is to participate in the divine fellowship; we’re invited to God’s party; it’s an invitation to come home!

• We’re invited to participate in the divine fellowship;
• We’re invited to God’s party;
• It’s an invitation to come home!

So come home! Attending worship tomorrow morning is going to help both Rebekah and me, as members of this faith community known as WFPC, and as members of God’s family, where we are completely at home.

Peace and blessings – DEREK