I am once again packing my life into boxes, to then unpack them in a new room. Luckily, this time I'm only moving from one wing of Westminster College to another wing, but it is still a task which is far from fun. However, as I sit in my new room I am struck how 'at home' I already feel.
The importance of feeling ‘at home’ has been an issue that
has again raised its head for me over the last few weeks. In conversations I
have had with new students, I have been reminded of the struggles I had during
my first term at Westminster. The struggles of where was home and how do I, if
I have to, make this place home. The importance of ‘home’ is one of the reason
why I chose to remain in the college grounds with the builders, rather than
move out to rented accommodation else where in Cambridge. Westminster has
become ‘home’, and ‘home’ is a stability that I find I need when the rest of my
world is in chaos. If I know where home is and know I can get back there easily,
then I know I can get through everything else. Maybe this seems a bit strange coming
from a person who has led a fairly nomadic life and who will continue to live
such a life. In my 32½ years, I have lived in six cities on a permanent basis
and have had prolonged stays in at least two others. I have already moved house
more times than the national average for the lifetime of a Briton! Therefore, home
you would not think is something I would find important. But it is, and maybe even
more so than for a person has lived in the same place their whole lives. I don’t
really have a hometown—I have a town I was born in, because for the time I live
somewhere, however long that might be, that place becomes my hometown. It becomes
the place where when I get of the train I say, "I’m home". And when I move on,
the transition is never an easy one—but what makes it slightly easier is God. In faith I have moved, particularly in most recently years when I
have controlled where I live, and through faith I have a spiritual home—a home that goes with me wherever I am and gives me sanctuary from the tumultuous storms of life.
So from my ‘new’ home to you in your home
may God continue to bless the places we call home.
may God continue to bless the places we call home.
