Ah, home.  As we all know, home often changes, but wherever it is, it is home.  When one's parents move out of a childhood home, as happens to many of us, home becomes, in a very real way, gone.  Its presence is there no longer.
     Yet it remains.  Home is important.  Home settles and soothes us; home grounds us.  We need home.  We need a place.  Not space, but place.
     But even place is not permanent.  In the closing verses of fourth chapter of his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul says that, clearly, our earthly bodies are decaying. Hence, he argues, we should consider the experience which lies beyond this present reality, that which lies outside the confines of our frail bodies.  It is that reality, he says, on which we should focus, for it is that reality which, far more than this evanescent existence, comprises the foundation of our moments.  Love our earthly home and homes, yes, but love that in which these homes find meaning, too.  Love the reason home is possible and plain.  Look at the bigger picture.

     In chapter five, Paul talks about being “naked” in our “earthly” dwelling (the current home of our body).  Now, we are in effect "naked."  We are not yet clothed with the experience of the next realm.  Indeed, we will not be fully “dressed” until we reach the other side.  That's our real home.
     As a person who while incarcerated on death row in a Texas prison found his salvation and meaning in Jesus remarked the night before his scheduled execution, "I've always wanted a home.  Now I'm going to get one."
     This person knew the real meaning of home.  Though the homes of this life are vastly important, they fade before the foretaste of the home to come, the home that necessarily grants other homes point and meaning.  Take away this home, and we're left with a very cold universe.