Is Anybody Home?

Is Anybody Home?

In the ten months I’ve lived in my little rental bungalow, I’ve seen my next-door neighbor on the west side exactly twice. The yard is neat. The front porch light comes on every night. I’ve even knocked on the front door a few times with a piece of misplaced mail—but there’s never anyone home. We spoke briefly one day after Hurricane Ike, when almost everyone was outdoors and assessing damage. And we exchanged greetings once over our backyard fences.

If I simply went by how neat the house looks, by the appearance of the surroundings, I’d say the owner is often in residence. But if I was asked to verify this suspicion, well, I couldn’t.

Each day I read the headlines and learn of a natural disaster destroying, another illness flirting with pandemic status, and foreign sabers rattling. Then it gets personal. Couples I thought were rock solid are separating. A friend’s mother is dying. Another’s sister is being challenged by an insidious disease that has no cure. Several friends are deeply concerned about their financial futures.

Some mornings I almost feel like looking toward heaven and asking, “Is anybody home?” But to judge whether or not God is in residence by the state of my circumstances would be a mistake.

So I rely on what I know for sure. God lives. He is here, and he is not silent. I may be more attuned to my immediate surroundings than I am to his presence, his people, or the small voice of the Spirit, but that myopic focus does not verify his absence. C. S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”^a

Someone is most definitely at home. The house is not unattended. Even in the half light of fear and sorrow and uncertainty, someone is always at home.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17, ESV

^a C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 140.