Home Is Love
Home is Love
In the 1978 movie The Wiz, the iconic Diana Ross sings, “When I think of home, I think of a place where there’s love overflowing.” [1]
What comes to mind when you think of home? Is it a warm memory? Is it a current safe space? Is home a place to which you long to go?
Often, when we think of home, we have a fixed place in our mind’s eye. A place where we grew up and made memories. It is a place we leave when we come of age. And then we create a new home.
Having just experienced this milestone in my own family, the passage into adulthood was enormous, even though the move wasn’t far. It seemed like we had each crossed a threshold into a new phase of life. The places thought of as home expanded.
As we move through our life of faith, I wonder if home is not just an external dwelling but an internal place as well.
“The evolution of Dorothy’s journey on the yellow brick road expands home beyond the narrow confines of a fixed place to a vast inward sea. ‘I’ve learned,” Dorothy says, “that we must look inside our hearts to find a world full of love … like home.’” [2] [3]
Home is love… that lives in each of us. That love is one of the true things about us, maybe the truest. That we are each created in the image of God and born from the love of God right from our very beginning.
From that foundation of God’s unconditional love, we find a home outside of ourselves as well as in. A place where we are accepted and welcomed.
Community Presbyterian Church welcomes all people into God’s way of life and community
Our church is a home too, for all of God’s beloved. What we do at CPC is welcome all people into God’s way of life and community. It’s who we are.
Our leadership teams of the session and deacons have embraced this statement of welcome. We will use it as North Star and a guiding path for our mission and ministry.
My prayer is that more and more people will come to find CPC as a place of welcome. That people experience a warm, open, and non-judgmental faith community and spiritual home. There is no need to guess whether you are in or out, welcomed or not. Everyone is welcome home.
Will you join me in that prayer?
Have you found a place of welcome at CPC? Can you share a story of that welcome? What does that welcome feel like for you?
“Home,” says Glinda the Good, “is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.” [4]
Loving God, may each one of us find a home. Thank you for warm memories of home and for the safe places we call home now. May we know ourselves to be your beloved, finding an abode with you within ourselves. And let Community Presbyterian Church be a home for all, welcoming our neighbors in your name. Amen.
Go make peace, my friends.
Pastor Leanne
[1] Charlie Smalls, “Home,” in The Wiz, book by William F. Brown, music and lyrics by Charlie Smalls, rev. ed. (New York: Samuel French, 1979), 89.
[2] Felicia Murrell, And: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 2024), 114–115.
[3] Smalls, “Home,” The Wiz, 90–91.
[4] Joel Schumacher, The Wiz: Screenplay, adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum (New York: Studio Duplicating Service, 1977).
Community Presbyterian Church
32202 Del Obispo
San Juan Capistrano. CA 92675
949-493-1502
info@sjcpres.org