Where is home?  How easy is it for us to move?  How do we know when we are truly home?

"Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you."  Perhaps Abram had some serious reservations about such a relocation, but the Genesis passage in today's first reading does not mention it.  "Abram went as the Lord directed him, and Lot went with him.  Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran."

Moving, I find, is much easier when younger people do it.  Toddlers move every waking moment.  Some even move around all during adulthood, uprooting kids and spouses while pursuing a career dream.  "Settling down" seems to some people like stagnation and death, so they are always on the go, moving about, and exploring new realities.

I am at a point in life when the prospect of a stable home, a place to settle in and be still is very appealing to me, not just in the physical sense of a location, or a certain house on a certain street in a certain town.  I hear little Dorothy from Kansas in my ear all the time.  Like many, the older I get, the more attractive it is to be at home.  It is easier than the challenge of going outside my parameters of comfort and what is known.  It is easier than moving to a new place, getting a new map, learning and relearning where things are, how I am supposed to act, what is expected of me, and where I can find solace and safety when I need it.

The example of Abram, however, compels me to make the unknown my home.  The medieval mendicants knew that they would never truly be home in this life, so they made the road their home.  My hero, Ignatius of Loyola, knew that the model Christian is a believer on pilgrimage, a person on mission, someone who is sent somewhere unknown.  This is who I want to emulate, someone who never gets too comfortable in the world.  I want to be willing to walk into situations of uncertainty and darkness, and see if I can light a candle.  I want to be able to move intellectually, spiritually, and physically, if necessary.  I want to be a person who is free enough to admit that when I am wrong, I can still grow and learn and change for the better.  I want to be like the child exploring the world and living it from the center.  I want to be able to say, like Tevye, the Jewish milkman, reflecting on his people's exile from their home, "Maybe this is why we always wear our hats!"  I want to be able to say, with St. Augustine, "Our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in You!"

That is the ideal, but the truth is, I am just too scared most of the time to move away from the familiar, even if I know that the familiar is not the best place to be.  I am no Abram.  I am no Sarai.

I am so thankful to hear what God promised our patriarch, Abram, whose whole life and identity changed once he embraced a relationship with the Great Unknown.  God promised to be with him and all his descendants forever.  Presence, after all, is everything.  That is what Moses discovered in his encounter with God at the burning bush; God is the "One Who Is."  If I am terrified of moving, whether it is spiritually, intellectually, or otherwise, my paralysis can give way to trust that God is present in my fears, as well as my little triumphs of courage when I can move into the unfamiliar and rejoice in what is new.  If nowhere else, I can be at home in God.

O God of surprises, thank you for the gift of hope!  "May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in You!"  In our comings and goings, our home is always in You.