Every place a home, every person a help.

Going Home

There is always something good about going on a journey but equally so there is something good about heading home. But home is not always what we might consider and call home. Having moved so many times during my life I have often considered the question of where is home?

I was chatting with a friend just a few days ago about the possibility of a trip to the beautiful island of Iona in Scotland.  I found myself getting emotional and enthusiastic at the same time. 

When I eventually decided that working as a butcher and involved in the killing of animals was not for me I went to Iona for a year in an attempt to learn enough to pass the entrance examinations for the university.

I lived and worked on this little island for a year. As I chatted I began to remember the many parts of this little island that I knew so well. So for a time this certainly was my home and in many ways, it still holds that place in my life that is held fondly.  There is much truth in the old saying, "Home is where the heart is."

The heart can, of course, hold many places dear because of the associations we have with them. We do not need to have tarried long in a place to consider it important in our lives. 

Journeys, places and people can have a dramatic effect on how we remember and hold dear those three.

Many years ago for some, a little house on a faraway hillside was a place to journey to a person held dear and a place full of meaning.

Word had spread afar about a wise man who lived in a small house on the side of a mountain. Not an easy place to reach but for many a journey worth making.

Like I made my journey to Iona all those years ago to get some order into my life, so to a young man decided to make a long arduous journey to visit the wise man to get his life back in order.

After many miles of travelling and many difficult paths to follow he arrived at the home of the wise man.

On arrival, he saw an old servant inside who greeted him at the door.

"I would like to see the wise man," he told the servant. The servant smiled and led him inside.

As they walked through the house, the young man looked eagerly around the house anticipating his encounter with the wise sage. 

Before he knew it, he had been led to the back door and escorted outside.

He stopped and looked around and turned to the servant, "But I want to see the wise man!"

"You already have," said the old servant. "Everyone you meet in life in every place your travel, even if they appear plain and simple and often insignificant each of them could be for you the wise man you need to find.

If you see everybody you meet with dignity and understanding whatever the problem you have brought with you may well indeed be solved."

I have journeyed far and moved aplenty and my life is full of little homes and meaningful places and people and I am often making homeward journeys and finding friends who help to keep my life in order and on the correct path.

May today be such a day for you. I am sure it will for me I may meet more than one wise person today.