By wisdom a house is built;
    by understanding it is established.
 By knowledge rooms are filled
    with all precious and pleasant wealth.
 A wise person is mightier than a strong one;
    a knowledgeable person than a powerful one. – Proverbs 24:3-5

Currently, Rebekah and I try to get back over to Wake Forest at least every couple of weeks so we can pick up mail, check on the house, meet with friends and conduct whatever business is called for.

I often say that we have a great house, in a picture-perfect neighborhood, in an idyllic town, in a beautiful state. All that is still true, and it is wonderful to keep up with people we love (to that end we had a long and meaningful lunch yesterday with our good friends Gayle and John); but our center of gravity – in terms of community – has absolutely shifted to the east.

So we rolled into Wake Forest Tuesday evening in time to grab a reservation at our current favorite eatery, the Cape Fear Seafood Company. Their food is fresh, delicious, and consistently above average. We enjoyed Calamari, Shrimp & Grits, an amazing Scallops & Risotto, and really good Key Lime Pie.

Our Tyler Run garden is a huge mess, but it benefitting from the fact that, several years ago, we made the design decision to “Give the garden back to God.” It turns out that God’s part is looking really good, but the area we elected to care for ourselves not so much.

This week the oak leaf hydrangea plants have been out, and the Japanese Maple trees are spectacular. It really is a lovely spot, with the house nestled back deep into the lot and all the trees coming into their early summer glory with a million million leaves featuring every possible shade of green.

Max of course understands beautifully how things work. He is happy when he is with us, when we are all together. He is fine by himself but nervous when we leave him at the house in Wake Forest, because he knows that the house here in Tarboro is where we are based.

What Max knows is that home is defined by family. What houses do is help us to root that family in a sense of “place.”

What church does is to root that place in spiritual community. And it all works together for what I like to call “the fully engaged life.” In fact, it is all necessary if we are going to be able to say that we are truly home.

We live in a world that seems sometimes to be defined by uprootedness, destruction, division and percolating discontent. What “home” – especially in a community with the church at its heart – offers is the understanding that our rootedness goes beyond just a house and a neighborhood but all the way to the heart of God… and the heart of God is all about the opposite of destruction, division and discontent.

In love, and because love calls us into community – DEREK