GOING HOME

A dying person may say that they want to “go home.” What do they mean? Where is their home? Obviously, many think it is heaven.

I read on Internet that “The idiom for death as ‘going home’ refers to the spiritual idea of the soul returning to a divine or eternal resting place, a concept known as "homegoing," especially prominent in African American culture, viewing death as a joyous return to God/Africa, rather than an ending, with services often called "homegoing celebrations." It's a comforting euphemism, meaning the deceased's spirit goes to heaven or their true, spiritual home.”

I’m not so sure. It sounds rather beautiful, but it is unlikely that African Americans thought that dying and returning to God in Africa was a “joyous return” any more than I think that dying and returning to my farmland area in Pennsylvania would we wonderful and desired.

The spiritual interpretation is generally that our home is in heaven, although few of us live with that scene in mind. 

In America and many other countries people travel on holidays. They are anxious to be home with family, especially on Thanksgiving. In 2025 nearly 82 million traveled by road and another 6 million by air. It is the busiest period of the year for travel. Home was a physical place here on earth.

When in college, I went “home” for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other periods of time. But I never intended to stay home. I had left my physical home, the farm where I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I knew that I was gone “for good.” I knew that I could never be a farmer, at least not a good one, having been a member of the “future Farmers of America,” where I had trouble growing sweet corn, looking after a sheep and feeding capons. 

We have had homes and houses in America, Papua New Guinea, and Australia, but we never viewed them as places where we wanted to stay.  I live now alone in Texas in a small community, but it is not my real home. My home is in heaven.

Of course, the idea of heaven being “home” is metaphorical because we are projecting our cultural understand of home on to a heavenly scene that we know little about. Does our home in heaven have a fireplace, toilet, bedrooms, a kitchen, and air conditioning? I don’t think so. Will we store our chariot in an attached garage? No, those are images from our earthly home but cannot be copied to what we will occupy in our heavenly home.

There will probably not be an angel who say, “make yourself at home,” one who thinks that our “home is where your heart is.” Our heart, our utmost desire, will not be on the home, it will be on the Lord.

We have probably heard the saying that “a man’s home is his castle,” meaning that he should be free in his home to do as he wishes, living something like a king.  But in heaven we won’t need to “keep the home fires burning,” nor will we need to “write home about it.” However, there may be some homework to do before we get there.

Do we have a “mansion, just over the hilltop,” as the Southern Gospel song indicates? The song, written by Ira Stanphill sometime in the 1940s, was reportedly after meeting a man who told him of a happy child living in a shanty, apparently, because he knew there was a mansion awaiting somewhere “over the hilltop.” Probably just a fanciful folk story, but the song is still popular in some places.

Because our home is in heaven, we are aliens here on earth. Think of it as having a “green card,” with permission to live and work on earth. However, our true citizenship is in heaven. Because we are citizens, we have certain privileges and obligations. On Internet I read that U.S. citizens have “the right to vote, hold public office, sponsor family for immigration, travel with a passport, work in federal jobs, access government benefits (like financial aid/Social Security), serve on juries, and gain permanent protection from deportation, offering deeper civic participation and security than residency. These rights, particularly voting, running for office, and permanent residency, are exclusive to citizens and crucial for a voice in government.” We will need none of those privileges or obligations in heaven.

We won’t need a passport nor an access to government benefits. Although we may serve as judges, our security will be in Jesus, not documents. As David said, “O Lord, you have always been our home. Before you created the hills or brought the world into being, you were eternally God, and will be God forever.” (Psalm 90.1,2)

Karl Franklin