More Than a House

Is your house a home? At first, this may seem to be a strange question. For homebuyers, one of the many motivations of purchasing a house is that this place will become a home. We are so used to talking about the money value of homes, but these two terms are not the same. A house is a building that may contain within its walls a “home.” However, home is more than just a physical place, and one cannot place a money value on a “home” in the same way one can do with a house.

My concern today is with home-building, not house-purchasing. We often think of home as the place where family dwells—and rightfully so. When we look back on the places that shape our lives, they almost always carry the presence and memory of family.

Consider home as a haven—a place where we go—especially when times get hard. The family is probably the most basic institution in our society. It provides a foundation for establishing relationships and teaches us how to develop relationships. Next to our personal relationship to Jesus Christ, much of our greatest happiness, our intense enthusiasm, and peace in our life comes through being a member of a loving family. When all others fail us, we go home to family. We believe, we trust, and we hope that our family will never turn its back on us. Think of the child who comes home from school crying that all of his friends abandoned him—and his mother and father say, "It's okay. We love you. You are home now." Consider the story of the prodigal son.

Home transcends house. My wife and I have lived in our present house for 48 years, and in that time it has become far more than a structure of walls and a roof. Within the rooms of this house, our children learned, laughed, and grew; the everyday rhythms of family life—meals and conversations, time together in work and play—wove a sense of belonging into every corner. This place holds our shared history and is a tangible expression of the home we built. However, it is not our true home.

As we think about the importance of home as a place for family, we must also remember those whose families are broken. Their struggles go deeper than house or neighborhood; they reach into the heart of belonging itself. When family abandons us, we lose more than people—we lose a sense of place. We call it a “broken home” because something essential to who we are has been torn apart. The greatest hurts in life often come from family, and we all know how difficult those wounds are to mend. We can choose friends, but not family, and those ties, whether strong or strained, anchor us to the places that shaped us. When they break, it is as though the ground beneath us shifts.

The loss of belonging we feel when family breaks apart reminds us that home was designed to hold together through the slow, ongoing work of love, commitment, and faithfulness. In order to be a home, a family must follow certain principles which are laid in creation: husband and wife together with children if God provides them. If parents walk away from their responsibilities, the children are left without a family, and essentially, they no longer have a home. The results are disastrous. In our society today, the number of children growing up without one parent is rising. In many cases today, marriage seems less and less important even though people continue to have children. I worry about a place for the children as they grow up. Home for many of these children is very limited, particularly when a father or a mother is absent. [1] When the family breaks apart, members lose their sense of place.

Yet God’s work of home and belonging extends far beyond the family into which we are born. In the church, lives intersect, stories are shared, and a new sense of place and belonging can be built. Here, all can find a home—a reminder that belonging is both given and nurtured through presence, care, and community. As a people of faith, we are called to this work: to care for those who desperately need family, and at the same time, to uphold and teach the principles God laid in creation for home and family. In doing so, we participate in uplifting the place of family in our lives and building upon places where love, faithfulness, and belonging take root—a reflection of God’s design for life together.

Footnotes:

1. In a recent podcast episode from The Gospel Coalition, Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra expands on the rising problem of the effects of the absence of one parent.