Home is a Heartsong

By Isabel Ong

I am both at home and far from home right now. Home is a tropical island called Singapore, located close to the equator where the sun (pretty much) always shines. Home is also a laidback coastal city in Canada, where toques and coats and crackling fireplaces keep me warm amidst cold, dark days.

I’ve lived in Canada for four years and counting, but it feels like I’m still searching for home here. I feel this desire most acutely when I speak, because my Singaporean accent immediately makes me out to be someone not-from-here. Being a visible minority as an Asian woman, too, is a rather new and unfamiliar reality that I wrestle with on the daily. This has been compounded by the recent rise in Anti-Asian hate crimes in these parts. More and more often now, this question keeps surfacing in my mind: “Do I really belong here?”

Jesus knows how disorientating this lack of belonging feels, particularly in a place one calls home. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 13:54-58; Mark 6:1-6; Luke 4:14-30) depict the rejection that He experiences in his hometown, Nazareth. The people there—folks whom He has grown up with, worked alongside with, and shared meals with—are astonished at his ability to expound on Scripture. They are unable to recognize Jesus for who He is—the Son of God—and see Him merely as a carpenter’s son (Matthew 13:55; Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22).

Scripture records that Jesus “marveled” at his hometown’s unbelief (Mark 6:6). After all, you’d have expected that these were the people who knew Him best. The irony, however, is that they hardly knew Him at all.

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Home, at least in the way I define it, is a delightful, un-self-conscious sense of belonging. To be home, and to feel at home, is to be fully seen, known, and loved. To me, Jesus embodies home: He sees people for who they are, lifts them up and out of their despair and agony, heals their ailments and afflictions, and restores their personhoods.

In searching for home in Canada, Jesus has given me a taste of sweet, sweet home through my life group. We vary in age, life stage, and culture, and we gather weekly to partake in Scripture’s life-giving words (and lots of delicious food too). Whenever I am with my life group, there is a kind of self-forgetting that occurs in the midst of this God-given fellowship. When I am with them, I don’t need to modify my accent or obfuscate my Asian-ness. There is an unquestionable sense of belonging, of being seen and known and loved for who I am and who God has made me to be.

And that, for me, is home.

Home is a heartsong that we may not know all the words to, but we know its tune instinctively; we hear echoes of it in everyone around us.

Home is a heartsong that is not bound by time and space; it reverberates in the silence and pulses beneath our busyness.

Home is a heartsong that makes room for all of who we are to be present; we don't have to hide and shove what we deem unflattering or unlikeable away.

And, more than anything else, home is a heartsong that Jesus hears and responds to with the words we’ve been longing to receive all along: “My child, you belong here. You are home.”

Isabel Ong

https://izzabelle.co/

Isabel Ong is a writer, editor, and social media strategist based in Vancouver, Canada. She is currently earning a Master's of Arts in Christian Studies at Regent College, and her heart's desire is to elevate stories of the marginalized and oppressed through her work.

You can connect with Isabel on Instagram at @izzabelle_co.