HOME?
02/02/2025
The theme for the 4 Corners Festival 2025 is Home? This was my take, as I read on the first Sunday evening of the Festival.
Home - question mark.
Where is my home?
Is it Ballymena
My hometown
Galgorm where the Stockmans are from
Harryville, the Kernohans
Is it where I was nurtured in Granny’s cottage beneath the thatch
Where I kicked my ball against the wall
The shops where I bought The Beatles
The church where God told me that I’d found him
Or is Belfast my home
Where I have now lived more than twice as long
Where I met my wife
Raised my children
And live out my vocation
Home?
Home - question mark
Home is where the heart is
What does that mean?
Do I need to go to some home because my heart is there?
Or is finding my heart wherever, home?
When all of me stretches out relaxed
In contented belonging
As if swaddled in a warm embrace
The arms of God’s grace
In Janice and Caitlin and Jasmine
All around me
Whether on sofas, or at a table, or on a beach or singing at a Ryan McMullan
Whether in Belfast or Ballycastle or Cape Town or Arua
Home?
Home - question mark
We are always heading for home
Or hearting for home
Or souling for home
Pilgrims tumbling and stumbling behind Jesus
Close enough to gather his dust
Following him home
And
As we journey
There are moments on the way
Where home comes and meets us
Which makes eternal sense
Because this will be home - no question mark
At the end of the ancient text
On the very last page
As everything comes to its end
Or the end of the beginning
Home comes down out of heaven
To us
Here
In a garden of shalom
With a tree of forgiveness
A river of justice
Where love is the air we breathe
Then,
Then,
Recycling will be recreation
Repression relieved
The riven are repaired
Reprobates redeemed
And remembering will become that hoped for resurrection
Home will be where my heart
Is known
Is healed
Has all it should have longed for
All it ever needed
Home.