for a friend...

While we still profess our faith in God's unconditional love, many of us still live in fear. (Henry) Nouwen remarks:
Look at the many 'if' questions we raise: What am I going to do if I do not find a spouse, a house, a job, a friend, a benefactor? What am I going to do if they fire me, I get sick, if an accident happens, is I lose my friends, if my marriage does not work out, if a war breaks out? What if tomorrow the weather is bad, buses are on strike, an earthquake happens? What if someone steals my money, breaks into my house, rapes my daugher, or kills me?

Once these questions guide our lives, we take out a second mortgage in the house of fear.

Jesus simply says, 'Make your home in me, as I make mine in you' (John 15:4). Home is not a heavenly mansion in the afterlife but a safe place right in the midst of our anxious world. 'Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make a home in him.' (John 14:13).

Home is that sacred space-extrenal or internal-where we don't have to be afraid: where we are confident of hospitality and love. In our society we have many homeless people sleeping not only on the streets, in shelters or in welfare hotels, but vagabonds who are in flight, who never come home to themselves. They seek a safe place through alcohol or drugs or security in success, competance, friends, pleasure, notoriety, knowledge, or even a little religion. They have become strangers to themselves, people who have an address but are never at home, who never hear the voice of love or experience the freedom of God's children.

To those of us in flight, who are afraid to turn around lest we run into ourselves, Jesus says, You have a home. I am your home. Claim me as your home. You will find it to be the intimate place where I have found my home. It is right where you are, in your innermost being. In your heart.

[from Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel, 147-148]