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I knew it was coming. Actually I’ve known it’s been coming for more than a year now. It’s been coming ever since mum died. It’s a lovely story in many ways, but I knew it was coming to an end. When my dad died in 1970 he had just (literally about three months before) taken out a life insurance policy. Being a vicar with no home of his own and no money to speak of, his death meant we had to move out of the vicarage with nowhere to go! The pay out on his life insurance policy bought us a house - literally to the penny. Mum bought a house where she had grown up and where we then grew up, Wimborne. On Saturday I went to the bungalow she had retired to, for the last time. It’s now sold. It’s now empty. It’s not home anymore. In many ways it’s not been home for a long time. I left Wimborne for university in 1982. I never lived in the bungalow, but it’s the place I grew up, Wimborne. And now the home that was there, is no longer there. I’m not particularly sentimental, but there’s something about not being able to “go home” that I will miss. That I do miss. Already. Thing is, as a follower of Christ I know that Wimborne never really was my home. And was never meant to be my home. Well…not really. Not in the long run. Not in eternal terms. And that’s the challenge. It really is. Jesus put it this way: “Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth…But store up for yourselves treasure in heaven... For where your treasure is there will be your heart also.” (Mat. 6 v19-21) We might think this is only about money. Maybe it is about money. But I also think it’s about where you think your real home is. A big part of my heart is in Wimborne. I want to go back there. I will visit. I would live to live there. And there’s noting wrong with being like that. Except for one thing: it’s not my real home. Never has been. Never will be. And if I spend all my time and energy trying to make it my real home, I’m missing out on the real thing. The day has come when it’s my home no longer. One day, this earth will cease to be my home, wherever I happen to be living. One day, one fine day, I will be with my father and my Father in my real home, a home where moth and vermin cannot destroy and thieves cannot steal (Jesus’ words). One day, one fine day I will be welcomed by my loving heavenly father who will rise to meet me and say: “Welcome home, Ian. I have a room prepared just for you. Welcome to your real home.” Right now I live in the tension between my home, and my real home. As I stood in the bungalow for the last time, ready to take way the sofa and the chair to give to a friend, I was faced with the truth that it was not my home. The truth that this world is not my home. And the bigger and far better truth that my real home waits for me. And the truth that one day, one fine day, I will be home.