Our homes in this life
If our lives are but the journey home then it suggests that the homes we have and make are preparations, and can be foretastes of that joyful homecoming. Making a home is not the same as a having a house though. A house can be bricks and mortar, but it can also be a mud hut, an igloo, a raft house on water, a cave, a tent, or anything that gives shelter from the elements. In the museum in Aberystwyth, in Wales, there is a life-size replica of a typical village cottage. It has just one room: there is a cooking fire, a table and chair, a bed and a cot. My first thought when I went inside was ‘it’s so small!’ but looking at the jugs on the shelf, the Bible on the table, my second thought was that, to my ancestors, while life was almost certainly hard and difficult, yet there could be laughter and enjoyment, eating, working, praying together. I’m always strangely drawn to it, because if you’re in there and another visitor comes inside, you can’t not smile at each other and start a conversation.