"Two Doorways, One Dwelling" - 02/10/2026

After returning from my brief trip to South Korea, where I was able to be with my mother during her hospital stay and celebrate her 76th birthday, I found the word home staying with me. Sitting on the long flight across the Pacific, I realized how deeply my heart recognizes two places. Korea still feels like a root-home, the place where my earliest memories live. And after more than 25 years in the United States, the Midwest has become a rhythm-home, the place where my daily life has been shaped. Moving between these two homes, I noticed something tender and humbling: it is possible to belong in more than one place, and still feel a little in-between. That in-between space has been stirring prayer in me, and it has been opening a deeper longing for the truest home God offers.

Scripture
“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.”
- Hebrews 10:23–24 (NIV)


Reflection
There is a particular mercy in the moment a plane begins to descend, when mountains and coastline appear, when signs return in a beloved alphabet, and something inside unclenches. A body remembers what the mind does not need to translate. The heart recognizes the contours of 집 (jip, home) before any suitcase is lifted from the overhead bin.

Yet time alters the familiar. What once required no thought begins to ask for explanation. A transit card, a machine full of buttons, a system everyone else moves through without noticing. The hands hesitate. The eyes search. A person can stand in the center of a birthplace and still feel like a guest. Not because the language is lost, but because rhythms have shifted. The old home remains a root-home, while the new home has become a rhythm-home, coffee-scented and wide-skied, with habits that live in the muscles.

That in-between feeling is not only geographic. It is spiritual. Even when life fits well enough, even when the days are full and meaningful, there is often a quiet ache that says the heart is made for more than what can be scheduled and solved. Scripture names this holy tension without shame. Hope is held “unswervingly,” not because circumstances are simple, but because God is faithful. And in that faithfulness, a people is formed who do not leave one another alone at the bright machines of life.

Hebrews speaks of “considering” one another, a word that suggests patient attention, a looking long enough to notice what is hidden. The church becomes more than a well-run house. It becomes a home where someone is known. In that kind of home, belonging is not earned by competence. Belonging is given as grace.

Then comes a vivid verb: “spur.” The Greek carries the sense of a holy stirring, παροξυσμός (stirring up). Not irritation, but awakening. Not pressure, but the gentle provocation that calls forth courage, kindness, and endurance. A community becomes a place where someone is met with help before embarrassment hardens, where room is made without announcement, where the lonely are remembered across oceans.

And beneath every doorway, older than every nation and truer than every passport, there is the deepest dwelling: God as home. The soul rests there, and learns to become a room-maker too.


Prayer
Faithful God, dwelling place of all generations, gather every restless place in the heart into the peace of your presence. Sprinkle clean what feels guilty, wash clear what feels burdened, and steady hope when life feels unfamiliar. Shape a community that notices, remembers, and makes room with joy. Stir love into action, and let your household become shelter for all who long for home. Amen.