(June 29, 2024) Mama Lava again shares her heart encouraging readers…

What is your definition of home – where you hang your hat? Is home where your loved ones are? Is it where your heart is?

Home – Consistent Topic
Recently, two of my daughters needed to find new homes. My son’s health scare had him confined to his home. My travels took me away from home. Home has been a consistent topic of conversation and prayer.

If you’re a regular visitor to the Back Porch, you read about how my plans for the blog were stifled last March, and you know I expected God to shine through with His truth this spring. Wow! He really drove something home (pun intended) for me, and I cannot wait to tell you about it.

The anticipation has been growing, as I’ve waited for the ability to type it out. My shoulder might be angry at me for the length of this post today, but my fingers can barely contain what my heart is bursting to share! I badly needed a break, a holiday! And we went to Hawaii.

Home – Embracing Memories
It was our first day back in Hawaii on vacation and with the time change, we were up before dawn. We wandered down to the beach to watch the sun come up. From Waikiki, the sun rises over the famous Diamond Head crater, and it is a sight to behold. We were in crowded company, on a volcanic rock jetty, as the sky began to brighten. Everyone had a camera of some sort, trained to the east.

That is everyone except me. I stole away alone, to the other side of the jetty, focusing my eyes west with my emotions. It was my first glimpse of home. For 10 years, I lived on the west side of Oahu. We raised our kids there and served God in many capacities there. I had left a chunk of my heart there when we’d moved to the U.S. mainland. And I hadn’t faced this in years.

Now, as I stood there, looking westward toward home, with the rest of the crowd facing east, my heart racing as if it would run across the water to reunite with the lost pieces of itself in an embrace of each memory living there, tears running unabashedly down my face, God spoke. He whispered to me, ‘That’s right. Keep your eyes on home. It is where the sun will eventually set.’

Home – Heavenly Citizenship!
I knew He didn’t mean the west coast of Oahu, but heaven! It was picture perfect reminding me that ‘… our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Phillipians 3:20).

While so many are distracted by the glitz, glimmer, and gold that arises in this world, sparkling and wooing the masses, you and I need to keep our eyes on our eternal home, my friends. We must stand alone and face away from the popular directional pull. At the end of the day, the sun will set on our lives and the Son will draw us home.

God pressed that message into my heart on day. Over the following couple of weeks, He reinforced it!

My husband Michael and I talked about the mountains we currently call home. Our town, nestled in the pines, with daily antics of chipmunks, birds, squirrels, deer, and other forest creatures, feels like home… except when compared to Oahu. We feel more at home on the islands than we do in the mountains.

Home – Jesus’ Forecast
But Hawaii is not our home either. We do not yet understand what home means. That level of contentment – that kind of belonging – will only be ours when we arrive at the home Jesus is preparing for us in heaven.

Jesus said so in John 14:2-3: ‘My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.’

The subject of home came up several times in Hawaii, as we reminisced with friends and family. I shared the story I’ve just told you.

But God had more up His proverbial sleeve. Only my husband knows this part of the story. It is why, shoulder limitation or not, tears flowing down my face (because of God’s goodness, not surgery pain), I had to type this out for you today.

It was late afternoon on our last day of vacation. I wanted to put my toes in the water one last time. We walked from our room to a not-so-crowded portion of the beach, where I left my husband to swim and I did my favourite thing; I walked the shoreline, feet in the water, occasionally getting splashed by the waves up to my waist. I was facing west, with home in view, struggling to fathom goodbye.

Home – Heart Centred
Suddenly, I kid you not, a heart-shaped hole opened in the clouds and light from the late afternoon sun streamed through, landing on that earthly spot where my heart feels most at home. If you know me, you know the significance I place on hearts in nature. It was all I could do not to sink to my knees in the surf. God lovingly reminded me, on my last day of vacation as He had on the first, the value of keeping my eyes on home.

I took this photo of the light from the heart-shaped opening in the clouds alighting on my heart’s earthly home so I wouldn’t have to wonder later if I imagined it. I was reminded of Ecclesiastes 3:11a, ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.’

Our earthly ideas of home are beautiful because God has placed a longing in our hearts for the home Jesus is preparing for us. And just as the sun was lower in the sky this time than the dawn of that first day, the Son is getting set. We can’t lose sight of what matters.

Do you find yourself distracted; aligned with the crowd, gawking at what beckons most glamorously? Are you overly obsessed with your home on earth? Or, even more dire, have you failed to ever turn your heart toward a heavenly home?

Joshua’s warning to Israel speaks to us today! ‘But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord’ (Joshua 24:15).

Home – Choose Today!
What’s your definition of home? Mine has changed! Home is where my Saviour is.

• We will all land somewhere across eternity’s shore but must choose on this side.
• One place will have none of the comforts of home; no place to hang a hat, no love.
• The other is where your heart was created to dwell forever. Where have you chosen?

I’m keeping my eyes focused there until the sun sets. Will you join me? Do send me sendsendyour email address.

My friends, thank you for coming along on this journey of truth, hope, and faith. If you aren’t privy to the events that led to this series, you can catch that here: I’m Looking Forward to Looking Back… Will You Join Me? I’ve been so appreciative of your grace and prayers during this time in my life.

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Mama Lava delights to share openly and honestly from her heart. She sincerely believes in making the big world a bit smaller through caringly connecting, that Jesus wants to remove our anxieties and give us His joy. In her encouragements, Mama Lava regularly tells of life experiences from an unapologetically Christian viewpoint. Link: Mama Lava’s Back Porch (Doses of Maternal Love).
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