By Don Schatz

Where Is Home?

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“And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”

Mark 1:12  New Revised Standard Version

Our family lived in Tucson some years ago.  I grew to love the Sonoran Desert.  While I live far from it now, on those opportunities to return for a visit I have a sense of coming home.  Sunrise over the desert can draw me back in memory to people, church, a formative time in ministry.  It can feel like coming home.

My mother always reminded us, “Home is where your mother is.”  She meant it!  She is in heaven now, so as always, she was right.  My father is there too.  And of course, our Heavenly Father, he who is the artist that paints the skies, over the desert and over his whole creation.

Following his Baptism, the Holy Spirit “drove” Jesus into the wilderness, or desert.  There, he resisted Satan for us, showing us the importance of knowing the true Word of God and being faithful to it.  In Mark’s Gospel especially, Jesus seems to be at home in the desert wilderness.  It provides a place to be with the Father in prayer.

Do you have a place, or places, that seem like home in this way?  When you are in those places, do you have a sense of renewal in the Lord?  Do the past and present, and the time in between, connect in such a way that you experience a sense of peace and of the Father’s embrace?  Where is that place?  What contributes to it being “that place” for you?  How is the Lord’s presence especially powerful there?

The Lord our God visits our hearts and makes them “that place” for himself.  If I may speak that way.  He transforms the desert-space with the bright colors of his Son Rise, continually painting our hearts with the hues of his love, his grace, his mercy, his tender compassion.  Enjoy the sunrise today.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado