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Home is wherever your heart builds an altar to worship the true and living Christ. In Genesis 28:10-16, Jacob spends the night in a solitary space and has an encounter with God – the pre-incarnate Christ. Awakening, Jacob declares, “Surely the Lord is in this place.” Later he builds an altar about that rock and calls it Beth-el: the house of God. We, too, can be at home and rest our cares upon the rock which is Jesus. God takes our hearts, where the Spirit lives, and makes them home. The New Testament calls it being born again or awakened. Like Jacob and so many of our biblical ancestors, we have a new perspective.
I had an awakening too, when I was in in the process of relinquishing the home left to me by my parents. I realized my inheritance was not this physical house, but the spiritual home forged here.
This message is excerpted from “Home for a new year” by Helen Hollingsworth in the January/February 2020 Gather magazine.