The yearning for home

When Janis was a small girl, her mother one night found her sleep walking outside, moving away from their house.

“Janis, what are you doing?” She shouted as her daughter kept on walking. No reply. “Where are you going?” She asked. “I’m going home,” Janis said, still farther away. “I’m going home.”

Even as a child, Janis Joplin seemed to realized that her parents’ house and “the great nowhere” of the ugly oil refinery town where they lived could never be her real home.

Restless, always restless, she later was devoured by loneliness so great that neither success nor her friends could assuage it. Like a force of nature she blew aside conventions and rode the storm of her passion to the pinnacle of rock and roll. But even on top of the world, she felt she was sitting by herself. Crisscrossing the country, she and thousands like her lived as nomads in an alien world.

After Janis Joplin overdosed on heroin at the age of 27, a close friend described her as “the best publicized homeless person of the sixties.”

It’s often said that there are three requirements for a fulfilling life. The first two - a clear sense of personal identity and a strong sense of personal mission are rooted in the third: a deep sense of life’s meaning.

In our time especially, many people are spurred to search for that meaning because they’re haunted by having too much to live with and too little to live for.

Let’s look at a famous actress this time. She says: “The main thing that I sensed back in my childhood was this inescapable yearning that I could never satisfy. Even now at times I experience an inescapable loneliness and isolation… Oh God, how I remember that feeling, though. Sitting on the front steps on a summer night and hearing a lawn mower in the distance and a screen door slamming somewhere. It would actually make my heartache.” Does it ever occur to you that this lonely actress happens to be a successful one by the name of Jessica Lange?

Let’s turn to the field of business this time. The legendary car maker Lee Iacocca wrote in his autobiography: “Here I am in the twilight years of my life, still wondering what it’s all about… I can tell you this, fame and fortune is for the birds.”

Why the nagging feeling of emptiness? Albert Einstein put it his way: “Our situation on this earth seems strange. Every one of us appears here involuntarily and uninvited for a short stay, without knowing the whys and the wherefore.”

I guess it’s true. Life here on earth is a short journey and we get distracted along the way. Most of us feel immortal in our teens and twenties, then move through life so fact in our thirties and forties that we lose sight of the journey and think only of our careers. 

And then the thickening waistline, the graying hair, the more frequent visits to hospitals and funeral homes awaken us to the realization that we are not immortal after all.

This is why Oss Guinness’s latest book entitled “Long Journey Home” addresses the question of the lonely hearts. In his book he concluded by saying that the end of the quest for meaning is the beginning of the journey of faith. And that quest is satisfied once we respond to the call of the Creator. And what is that calling?

That we respond to His love by putting our faith in God, that our souls would only find rest once we rest in the Presence of God. Jesus Christ says, He is the way, the Truth and the Life. And those who have found Him have come upon that rest.

The journey to the final home may be an uphill climb, but the home awaiting us there is one that satisfies.

There’s a difference between being a wayfarer or a wanderer. For the wanderer the journey is everything not the destination.

As Daniel Boorstin, the librarian of Congress says: “We have come from seeking meaning to find meaning in seeking. But when faith come the quest ends and the journey begins.”

Iacocca was the celebrated businessman many years ago. Young people today hardly know him. Janis Joplin was the star of rock and roll before, and now she has been forgotten. But life here on earth is not destined to be food for worms alone, there is a hope and there is a life beyond life here on this planet.

It’s the life that is spent in all eternity in the presence of the only One who has conquered death and that is Jesus Christ. No wonder He says, (John 14:2 NIV) in my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.

This is what the world celebrates today. This is what Resurrection Sunday is all about. This is the Hope that we yearn for and the Home that we long to be. And may in Him I am certain that you would find it too.

(Experience two inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong in his highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership on May 17-18 at Makati, Shangri-La Hotel. For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798.)