We moved recently.

(Well, relatively recently. After four months, you’d think you might have made the time to hang pictures on the walls, might have found some place other than your bathroom counter for storing clean towels, might have turned the dining room into a functional space rather than a repository for all the random bits and pieces that surface during a move.

You’d think those things – I’d think those things – but you’d – I’d – be wrong.)

It was a whirlwind process. Moving was nowhere on my radar until mid-June. We scheduled an “it-won’t-happen-but-let’s-check-it-out-for-due-diligence” first showing of what would become our new home at the end of that month, we were in escrow by the second week in July, and we moved the last weekend in August.

Allow me to state the obvious: moving, especially on a shortened timeline, is disruptive. It upends everything. Your routines, your commute, your equilibrium. Everything gets shaken up, tossed around, thrown into disarray.

This can end up being a good thing. Sometimes, we need to be disrupted, forced to move out of our comfort zone. But leaving the place you call home, leaving a place of stability and security even in search of something better, isn’t easy.

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There’s a lot of wandering in the Bible.

The patriarchs were nomads. God’s people traveled to Egypt, resided there as foreigners and slaves, and, even after their costly freedom, meandered through the desert for forty years. The judges and prophets roamed the land, generations of Israelites were taken into exile by Assyria and Babylon, Ezra and Nehemiah made their way back to the land that was no longer really their home.

Even the New Testament is replete with people on the move: Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem and then to Egypt, Jesus and Paul and their assorted companions travelling from town to town to proclaim the Kingdom, John being exiled on Patmos.

Perhaps there’s something to be learned here: the story of God’s people – the story of humanity – is not an easy story. It’s one of disruption, of men and women on the move, a people restless and wandering, who have left the place they call home.

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My Abby has the biggest heart of anyone I know.

She also has the biggest emotions, which she does not hesitate to share with the world.

And this girl of mine, well, she does not like change. Which has meant that we have had to process a lot of big emotions together over the past several months. Moving out of the only home she had ever known was no small thing in her world.

Some of that processing has happened through weeping and wailing. Some, through writing: lists of good memories and things to look forward to, a letter to the new owners of our old home, a short story about a young girl who has to leave a house she loves. And some of it has happened through art.

A month or so after we moved, she drew a picture of our new house with “the big yellow house” scrawled down one side of it. I noticed her title, asked if she thought she was ready to relabel it as “home.”

“No!” she declared, defiant. “This house will NEVER be home!”

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The first time somebody leaves their home in the Bible is, of course, in the story of Adam and Eve.

It isn’t a pretty story. Despite the talking snake, despite our colorful Sunday School illustrations with Eve’s hair arranged just so, the tale told in Genesis 3 just might be the most tragic tale ever told.

It’s a story of ruptured relationship, of corrupted beauty, of paradise lost. And after it all, after God in His sorrow reveals to them the full weight of the consequences of their actions, they are cast out of the garden and forced into exile, an exile from which they have no hope of ever returning.

This, I think, is a key part of this story: when their relationship with their creator is broken, they lose the only place they have ever called home. They lose the garden, their place of safety and refuge made specifically for them, the place where they belong.

And ever since, we, their sons and daughters, have only ever been trying to find our way back, for this world as we know it will never truly be home.

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Don’t tell Abby, but there have been plenty of times when I’ve been solidly in agreement with her. This big yellow house has not felt like home, and I have questioned whether it ever will.

It’s strange and unfamiliar. Things feel just a bit off. All our belongings are scattered around, in boxes and out of them, and nothing is where I expect it to be.

More than that, though, is the long list of things that need fixing. Yard care and routine maintenance haven’t been addressed in who knows how long. Part of the foundation is literally sinking into the ground. Rodents have had free reign of the property for years and haven’t yet gotten the memo that they’re no longer in charge.

Don’t get me wrong: the bones are good. There’s so much beauty, so much potential here on this new property of ours.

There’s just so much work to do to turn it into the home it was meant to be.

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We are, the apostle Peter tells us, sojourners and exiles.

For many years, I took this to mean that everything here was temporary, that we were all just waiting for our chance to ditch this spinning rock for some place better. This world was not my home, which was a good thing because it was all just gonna burn anyway.

Lately, though, I’ve been wondering if Peter is saying something different. Maybe it isn’t so much that we’re in the wrong place. Maybe we’re in the right place, but it’s in the wrong state.

The bones are good, but it’s been neglected. It has far more deferred maintenance than we can handle on our own. Rodents have taken over and haven’t gotten the memo that they aren’t really the ones in charge. There’s mold in the walls and parts of the foundation are crumbling away. There are so many things that need fixing.

There’s so much beauty, so much potential here but we can’t do it all, can’t even come close to turning it into the home it was meant to be.

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I was chatting with a friend recently, someone who has lived in her current home for longer than I have been alive. I told her we were still feeling a little unsettled in our new place. I said I had thought we’d be further along in the process by now.

She was shaking her head before I was even done speaking.

“Two years,” she said with conviction. “Give it two years. The normal stuff doesn’t stop just because you moved. You still have to live your life.”

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We cannot turn this world into the home it was meant to be. Not on our own. Not in this age.

But we can live our lives, building homes and planting gardens, marrying and having children, seeking the peace and prosperity of the places in which we find ourselves.

Doing our part to fix the things in front of us that we can fix, to build and create and love.

In other words, even as we are exiles in this place, we can and should strive to do all the things that make a house a home.

And one day? One day, it will be transformed. And on that day, it will truly and completely be home, in every sense of the word.

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I asked Abby the other day if this house was starting to feel more like home. When she declared that it wasn’t, not yet, I wondered if there was something we could do to help make it happen.

“We need to create memories,” she told me. “Really, really special ones.”

I mentioned those we’d already created – the party dear friends brought to us after a couple of hard weeks, bible studies and family dinners, holiday celebrations and Christmas gifts. I reminded her of the hours she’s spent exploring the property, of the fruit we’ve enjoyed from our own trees, of the fact that her grandparents will be moving here soon.

She nodded thoughtfully.

“All of that has helped,” she said. “But it still doesn’t quite feel like home.”

She paused, looking around, then skipped off to go play, calling back to me over her shoulder.

“It doesn’t feel like home yet, but it will. Sometime in 2025, it will.”