Homeless in Battle Creek

This is my office!!! The place where I will study, write sermons, counsel with people, devise strategies, drink coffee, and occasionally take a nap (but only if I have earned one:-).  It is starting to feel like home, especially since I don’t have a home to go to yet.  Don’t get me wrong, the apartment that I am staying in thanks to the generosity of some very kind and generous folks here in BC is great, but there is nothing like being home.  The home that I still own in Midland feels less like home each time I visit, and when my family moves out to come and stay here with me, that will truly close the door on that being “Home” any more.  The Church here at North is starting to feel like home as well.  Each week I master a few more names, and make connections from those names to some of the stories that are being told to me over coffee, supper, breakfast….well you get the idea.

The more time I spend without a home of my own to go back to, the more I can identify with Jesus as he lived his life without any kind of home.  He even said, or possibly lamented at one point  “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man* has no place even to lay his head.” Matthew 8:20 (NLT).  What would it be like to never have a home or own anything of value?  Jesus literally had nothing but the mission that his father had sent him for.  He spent his whole adult life on earth doing the will of his father, and the only things that he took with him as he traveled were the things that were absolutely necessary to that mission.  That must have been a hard life.

I say that I want to follow Jesus and be just like him, but the truth of the matter is, I don’t want to be homeless, nor do I wish for my family to be.  It is a little different for me, in that I do have a family to consider, and Jesus denied himself that privilege because of the mission that he was on, and probably also because of the pain that his death would have caused his family if he had had one.  So how do I follow Jesus and be like him, in this world where houses and cars and lands define many of us and give us our comfort and sometimes even our self worth.  Can I win the battle for my own identity, by not allowing the things I own to define me, but instead be defined by the mission that Jesus has given all of us who believe?  That is my goal, and my challenge.  The mission of Christ is the primary passion of my life, and whatever I own must complement that mission. Whatever I choose to buy must be a tool in the hand of the master so that even my possessions can bring glory and honor to His name.  After all, these things are all blessings from His hand anyway, I am just the steward whom he has allowed to manage them for a time.

Being homeless can really change your perspective…maybe everyone should try it once or twice in their lives.  I think we would find that , especially here in America, we would see our “things” differently after the experience, and be more thankful for the blessings of God in our lives.