My Starter Home

My Starter Home

I never got the whole “starter home” concept. Until now. Years ago, when my friends were buying their first houses and calling them starter homes, I was moving from rental to rental and only vaguely concerned that I was not building equity. Every place I’ve lived in has felt like home to me, even the ones I didn’t stay in long. They felt like home because friends and family gathered in them, my books were stowed in their bookshelves, and my dogs were happily in residence.

Then I took the plunge. Most of my friends are well down the road from their starter homes—but I just moved into mine. Through a series of God-kissed serendipities, I am living in a home I didn’t expect and surely don’t deserve.

Here’s the sweetest part: no one will call one day and tell me it’s time for me to move again. I’ve even given away my boxes this time. One dear friend termed this my “temporary-permanent” home, and on reflection, she’s spot on. It’s permanent. For now. Which makes it . . . temporary. It’s home until I’m really home. So although I’m a little late for a starter home, that’s exactly what I’ve got. That’s what every other believer has too.

This earth is nothing but our starter home. It’s not where we will dwell forever. God has planned a new heaven and a new earth that will have the comforting, sweet familiarity of an old pair of jeans or well-worn boots, but it will be brilliantly, audaciously shiny and new. He’s planned our true, forever home, and he is bringing us to it in his perfect time.

I said no one will call and tell me it’s time to move again, but that’s not quite true. One day God will. He’ll say, “Darling daughter—I love you. It’s time to come to the place I’ve made for you. Close the door on that sweet starter home I gave you, and come with me to the place you were meant for all along.” Then—and only then—I’ll be at my final, permanent address and be fully, completely at home.

We know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 5:1, NASB