Most of us think of home, whatever or wherever or whomever home may be for us, as a place of comfort, familiarity…a place of rest.  Home offers us a sense of completeness.  When you are there you can let your hair down, you can put your feet up, or you can just go barefoot; you can be you, for better or for worse.  After all, home is where when you go there, they have to take you in, right?

Even today’s Psalm speaks poetically of home.  “O Lord, YOU have been our Dwelling Place.”  God, you are our home.  “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. 

We want to sink into that like a big, warm, cozy chair in front of a fireplace and say Yes, God!  You are home! We want that peace to wash over us and we want to be able to forget the troubles of the day.  We want to wear that “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” T-shirt and mean it; we want to heed advice that says, “Put a smile on your face and choose to be happy.”[1]  Yet, don’t we all know it’s always, always easier said than done.  We’re content to rest in God, we’re content to let God hold our hearts, until we turn on the news or answer the phone or even wake up to our own daily lives…then waves and waves of reality wash over us and suddenly the peace is gone, home is gone, and we find ourselves struggling for a foundation.   

How many of you are like me and dread turning on the news or even the weather channel these days?  First, Katrina.  And as if Katrina weren’t bad enough, then Rita.  The devastation of homes just multiplied.  Then we heard of the catastrophic earthquake in Kashmir.  And now Wilma.  The hits just keep on coming.  We like the Psalmist cry out, “Turn, O Lord!  How long?  Have compassion on your servants!”

Of course, home is about even more than a piece of land washed away in a flood.  One of my college roommates has never lost her physical home, but her father died of lung cancer when she was in middle school.  It was devastating for her.  At Furman one day, I walked in and Susan was on her bed crying.  Her Mom had just been diagnosed with colon cancer.  Less than a year later, Susan’s senior year of college and just two days before Christmas, Susan called to say her Mom had just died suddenly of complications.  Less than a year ago, Susan’s grandmother, who was as dear to Susan as her Mom and Dad, also died.  How long, O God, how long? 

Most of us are all too familiar with these devastating doses of reality all around us, and we, like the Psalmist, long to rest in that peace that only God gives amidst the reality of wilderness.  The Psalmist today knew much about wilderness wanderings…Psalm 90 is the only Psalm attributed to Moses, God’s favored prophet, called to lead God’s people out of slavery, into the wilderness, and onto the Promised Land.  Do you remember the story?

Moses, saved as a baby from Pharaoh’s genocide of Hebrew boys.  Moses, a murderer and a coward, found by God and called before the burning bush.  God said, Moses, take off your shoes.  This is holy ground.  Stand barefoot before me, put your feet up, call me home, and instruct the Israelites to do the same.  I know your past and I hold your future.  I promise you and the Israelites a land flowing with milk and honey and I will lead you there, but you must call me home, you must trust me, and you must walk with me.  Isn’t it always, always easier said than done?

But Moses and the Israelites did call God home…after all, God led the Israelites out of slavery; after they were liberated from the tyranny of cruel Pharaoh, the hard days were over, their lives would be good now.  They were set free and their liberator God led them to the wonder and the lush accommodations of the…wilderness.  The wilderness, that barren place that no one wants to call home, yet we all know it well.  A dry, confusing place, a less than desirable place to dwell.  At first glance, hardly a place of comfort.  And do you remember?  The Israelites grumbled.  Reality was cold, harsh.  How long, O Lord?  God, are you even still with us?  God, you promised us land, you promised us home.  God coached them… be faithful, keep my commandments.  I am your God, I promise you land, I can’t promise it will always be easy, but I Am with you.  I Am your home, abide in me, dwell in me.  Be faithful and walk on.  But isn’t it always easier said than done?  And why is that?  Why does the wilderness of life always seem so much more real than the peace of God?   

For several summers, I was a camp counselor at a Girls Camp in North Carolina where I taught climbing, as in rocks and mountains.  I don’t know if many of you know much about climbing mountains here in Texas...  At first glance, you would think that it requires great arm strength.  But it doesn’t.  You use your leg muscles much more because you legs are so much naturally stronger than your arms.  Your legs can push you up a lot faster than your arms can pull you up.  It requires no more muscle to climb a mountain than it does to walk up stairs.  Who knew?  Trying to teach this to young kids is one of the hardest things in the world, mainly because they have to trust something that doesn’t make a bit of sense.  Furthermore, we coach them from the ground…when they’re up there on the rock, they’re on their own.  It’s up to them to decide to trust what they know.  After we harness the kids and secure the ropes, we show them how we belay the rope…we’re at one end and they are at the opposite end of the same rope.  If they fall off the rock, they don’t fall to the ground…we’re holding them.  And I promise this is 100% safe.  Before they climb, we look them straight in the eye and say, “Trust us, trust yourself, you can do this—remember what you know.”  But it’s always, always, easier said than done. 

Finally we give the climbing command that sends their excited arms and legs flying up the rock wall.  But halfway up, almost always, the kids forget to trust and use their legs.  Their arms give out as they try to claw themselves up the whole wall like a monkey.  They forget to take their time, plant those feet, trust those legs.  Now in all fairness, who wouldn’t forget if it’s your first time hanging from only a rope 20 feet up in the air?  Inevitably fear sets in and they really want to give up.  They’re dangling from the rope and they want to come down.  But unless, they’re really scared, we don’t let them come down quite yet.  What we know and what they don’t know yet, is that it’s so worth it to keep trying.  We’d remind them, “Katie, remember, you can do this.  Take a deep breath, find a resting place for your feet, and stand up on those legs.  They can totally hold you.”  Still, some of them continue to flail and flail trying to reach and secure hand grips before finding a foundation to stand up on.  But on a good day, one will keep at it.  She’ll be so frustrated, but so determined.  And she listens to us coach.  And she makes it.  And when she gets to the top, I don’t know who smiles more, the young girl who feels the new confidence, or the coach who believed she could do it all along.  On an even better day, a camper will come to you and say, let’s try a harder one; I can do this. 

Just like we can so do this thing called life.  When wave after wave of reality washes over us, be reminded, God is our home; it’s up to us to trust that…it’s also up to us to stand up and use our legs to get up those mountains.  Please hear me; I’m not saying that this is nearly as simple as when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.  Life is hard, it’s unfair, we make a lot of mistakes, and some days are just bad, some years are bad.  That’s the reality.  We all know it’s just not simple.  A woman I met in South Africa knew this too. 

I worked at an inner city church in Pretoria two summers ago.  During my time there, I was able to serve at a church soup kitchen at one of the informal settlements: one of the tin shack shanty towns that spread for miles and miles…no running water…on the outskirts of the city where many poor people still live. Many have lived there since the white apartheid government forced persons of any other skin color to live outside the city limits, now nearly half a century ago.  The woman I met was named Eunice.  Her husband died of AIDS, so had her children.  She lived in one of the 8 x 8 tin shacks that are hot in the hot South Africa summers and cold in the cold, but brief, South Africa winters.  She passionately led the church’s efforts to feed others in the community. 

After we finished serving lunch one day, she invited me to her home.  So off we went, walking over sewage and garbage, along the dirt roads and the blocks and blocks of tin homes to her home.  Once we arrived, we never once stepped inside her house…not because she was ashamed, but because that wasn’t her home.  Instead, she introduced me to her neighbors; she introduced me to her extended family.  Then she proudly showed me a chair made of a box sitting on her dirt “patio”… “this is where I pray.”  I have never in my life seen a more beautiful home. 

Her home gave her every bit of strength and confidence to ask God, just as the Psalmist did, “Prosper the work of our hands, O prosper the work of our hands!”  She may not have had money to give or a house to open to others, but she had a gift in her heart that she could communicate by using her hands to feed others, to work for God.  In that too, she found a home.   For you see, Eunice knew, just as Moses knew, that Home is not about where you are or where you live…it’s about who you’re standing with.  After all, Moses never made it into the Promised Land, the Promised Home…but he had found true Home in loving and serving God with faithfulness.  Just as we read in Deuteronomy, Moses, who had loved and served God for a lifetime, not perfectly, but faithfully, stood on the edge of the mountain, face to face with God, and knew the peace of Home.  May all of us who wander this day, stand face to face with God and then, may we have the courage to dwell there.  Amen.