A little bit of hope

"Why were you searching for me?" he asked. "Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?" LK 2:49

At the beginning of the World Meeting of Families I was struck by the above passage, I think I was reading something that reminded me of it. As I was so busy I did not get the time to reflect on it at the time.

In this passage, Jesus is confused as to why Mary and Joseph appeared so worried. Having attended the Temple with Mary and Joseph, Jesus stayed behind. Why? Jesus had been attending the Temple with Mary and Joseph on a yearly basis for the Festival of Passover for a number of years. In this passage, Jesus was 12 years old. By the age of 12 Jesus had become very wise. The wisdom he possessed helped him to understand that the Temple was his Father's house. And it is perfectly normal to feel at home in your father's house. For Jesus, he knew it was in his Father's house that he belonged.

When you find that place which is truly home for you the feeling comes naturally. You don't have to try fit in or make it feel like your home. You just naturally get the sense of being at 'home'. This place is not always the house you grew up in with your parents and siblings. It might not even be in the country that your family live in. Wherever your true home is, believe me, you will know when you have found it. And every time you go back you will feel a great joy knowing that you are going 'home'. Don't go searching for this place, let it come to you naturally. When you are there you will know it. Here troubles of life are manageable, you can overcome anything that life throws at you.

While finding that place which is truly home for you brings great joy, I think that it possible for some people to go through life having never found this place where they truly feel was 'home'. It might have been there and they may not have seen it because they were too preoccupied. Or maybe circumstances in life meant that they never got to that place that was home for them. Plans in life change and when we are faced with deciding what path to take in life there is a chance that the path we chose is the one that leads us in a different direction, a direction where we won't experience this great joy of 'home'.

As I sat down to do this reflection I flicked through my Uganda journal first. I loved Uganda and at the time I felt like I really belonged there. But did it feel like home? While I may have thought it at the time no, I didn't get that deeper sense of home there. But I have had the pleasure of feeling this great sense of feeling at home elsewhere in my life.