A Word About Homesick

I saw a post on social media the other day from one of my friends when I was in high school. I guess they’ve been planning it for a while now, but they finally took the plunge. They’re moving back to our hometown. She and her husband have been living in a different state for several years, but now, they’ve decided to move back to area where we grew up. I’m not sure why they’re moving. Maybe it’s that the cost of living where they live now is a lot more than where they’re moving to. Or, maybe they’re moving because they have a lot of fond memories and friends that still live in the area and they’re looking to re-connect. Or maybe? She didn’t mention it in her Facebook post, but maybe they’re moving because she’s just plain old homesick, I don’t know.

Not everybody gets homesick, I don’t think. Homesickness is kind of a deep, emotional response to being away from a place we long for, or people, or even routines that give us comfort or a sense of belonging. It’s hard to exactly describe it, because it’s a ‘feeling,’ I think. And feelings can be hard to describe or explain. Homesick is that tug in your heart when you’re far from home. But it’s about more than just a physical place; it’s a longing for the warmth, security, and identity that ‘home’ represents. It’s more than just missing a location—it’s the ache for the people, experiences, and connections that make up the essence of that place we called home.

I wonder if Adam and Eve ever got homesick after God told them they had to leave The Garden of Eden? I’m guessing they were overcome by that longing for home. I can’t help but believe that leaving that incredible home where they walked with God in the Garden of Eden was the saddest thing they could ever imagine. But the gnawing reality their sin produced, birthed a contagious condition known as separation from God: they passed on to every human being who would ever live a factory-installed longing to somehow get back home to God.

The Bible has some things to say about that kind of homesickness. But there’s an interesting twist to the homesickness in the Bible. In the Old Testament, the Israelites wandered around in the desert for forty years, longing for a home they’d never seen, a land they’d never been to. They were homesick for a Promised Land. 

In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews also touches on that same theme when he speaks about the Christian’s ultimate home being in heaven: He wrote, “For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come” (Hebrews 13:14). I think the deepest form of homesickness we can ever know or experience is a God-longing—a longing for a permanent home with God, where we are fully known, and loved, homesick for a place where God’s presence dwells.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a better description of homesickness than David wrote in Psalm 27:4:”One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”