WHERE DO YOU LIVE?

We purchased our current home about four months before we actually moved in.  We had some renovations done in order to make it not just a house, but our home.  When folks asked where our new home was, we were able to point them to the mountain and say at the foot of those three, now four, cell towers.  It’s amazing how far away those cell towers can be seen.  You can see those towers from a good 20 miles in the county.   It’s such a comfort that even when we’re not home, we just look for the towers and feel home.  There’s something about the feeling of where we live, isn’t there?  We may travel, we may roam, but there’s no place like home.  Where we live reflects who we are, doesn’t it?

What do we do when we meet someone for the first time?  We greet them.  Tell them our name.  Ask them their name.  Ask about their life – what do you do? do you have family? – and the question we’ve all been asked — where do you live, where is your home?   If it’s someone we haven’t seen for a while the question is – where you living now?

Tony and I traveled earlier this year and upon arriving home, there was a sign on our front door – it’s still there as a reminder – Welcome Home!  Livi missed us when we weren’t home and we missed being home.  There’s just something about the comforts of home – Home Sweet Home.  It’s a place we’re always anxious to leave and always anxious to get back to.  Home, whether a place or a feeling is like that for all of us.  We all have a “home” somewhere.  A place where our hearts live, a way in which our hearts live.

Have you ever wondered where Jesus lived, where He considered home?   Bethlehem?  Jerusalem?  Jesus said:  “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”  Matthew 8:20.  Well, that takes care of the first question.  Looks like Jesus’s home was wherever He was.  Could we be “home” wherever we are?

Remember when Jesus was about 12 and his family traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival?  After the festival, his family, along with a really large caravan of travelers, set out to return home.  I imagine the travelers were beatin’ feet.  They had been gone for some time and were probably anxious to get back home to tend their tents, to get back into a routine.  But, their beat feet came to a screeching halt when Mary and Joseph discovered Jesus was not in the caravan.  I always wondered if Mary and Joseph felt the same way my Mom used to feel when I got lost in Rocky Ridge Meat Market.  Only Jesus had been missing for a day, not seconds.  He was not one aisle over, He was a few towns away.  It took mom one loud shout to find me.  It took Mary and Joseph three days to find Jesus.  Did anyone else have the same thought I had?   How in the world do you lose Jesus?  I mean, think about it.

When they found Jesus, He answered the “Where have you been?” question this way:

Wist ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?

Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?

You should have known that I would be in Father’s house.

Luke 2:49

Jesus’s first spoken words were about His Father.  Ponder that.   Jesus was in His Father’s house — physically and spiritually.  This made me think about where I am.  Where I live.  Where I dwell.  Where do I reside and abide?  Where does my mind live?  Where do my thoughts dwell?  Where does my heart home?  Where do I pitch my physical and spiritual tent?

Where our hearts and minds live, abide, reside, and dwell is where we live.  Maybe not where we bed down, or maybe so, but where we really live – where we conduct the Father’s business.

In his book My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers asked the question “Is the Son of God living in His Father’s house in me?”   Is the Holy Spirit living in me?

Psalm 84 is all about where we are to live — in the presence of God.

How lovely is your dwelling place.

O Lord Almighty.

I long, yes, I faint with longing

To enter the courts of the Lord.

With my whole being, body and soul,

I will shout joyfully to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home there.

and the swallow builds her nest

and raises her young –

at a place near your altar,

O Lord, Almighty, my King and my God!

How happy are those who can live in your house,

always singing your praises.

Psalm 84:1-4

Where have we built our nest?  Do we live in the presence of God?  Do we cozy up to the altar?  Do we dwell with the Most High?  Do we live in His house?

Look at Luke 2:49 again.   It says: “Wist ye not that I might be about my Father’s business?”  Aha!  Being, living, dwelling, abiding, residing in my Father’s house has a direct connection to how I conduct my Father’s business.  Where we live has a direct connection with how we live or who we live.    Are our lives about the Father’s business?  Can others look at us and see we’re in our Father’s house, we’re about His business?  Do our lives reflect where we live?  Is Jesus in the house?