Home Practical Improvements

House Versus Home

You hear people say, “A house is not a home.” A certain Polly Adler – who has been credited for that line – did not say why it is so, but he’s right. While a house could accommodate a home, and a home could find lodging in a house, they could do without the other.

House and home, you see, are two different entities.

With money one can acquire a house. But you own a home only by loving somebody and getting loved in return. (On second thought, you may not even possess a home; a home possesses you.)

In the final analysis a house is something; a home is someone. That’s why you don’t go or come home to a building; you go or come home to your loved ones.

We talk about an empty house, but I wonder whether there is such a thing as an empty home.

We also talk about being homesick just like being carsick or having a cold, when being homesick really means feeling lonely. You don’t feel lonely for a thing; you feel lonely for a person.

We equate home with security, acceptance, and belonging – which it truly is. Then it becomes crystal clear that the essence of home is not place but person.

A man named Moses understood that. Without a permanent residence during the 40 years he wandered in the wilderness of a place called Sinai with a band of discontented, uncooperative people, he wrote, “Lord thou has been our dwelling place in all generations” (Psalm 90:1). Moses’ real home had been the Lord. Not some brick house or cave or tent – but the Lord.

Not Where But With Whom

Sometime ago one magazine carried this enlightening, inspiring story.

“After World War II a soldier returned from overseas and started looking for a place to settle with his wife and daughter. Someone asked the little girl where she lived. ‘We don’t have a place to live right now,’ she said.

“You don’t have a home? The questioner repeated.

“Oh, yes, we have a home,’ the girl replied. ‘We just don’t have a house to put it in yet’

“It is not where you are, but who you are with that gives you a home.”

It’s true that when you talk about home, you talk about a place. But if you really think about it, it is not so much about a place that’s made of wood or brick or marble. It is a place deep down in the hearts of dear ones.