“Songs of Home”

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Earlier this year, I was riding in the car with a friend who is a native of South Africa, and I got curious if he knew any of the songs from the movie Invictus, so I turned on the soundtrack. He knew and responded to a few of them, but there was one that really got him emotional—he tried to sing along and started to choke up. I figured that it must be a really profound or sad song, so I asked what it was about, and he said, “It’s just about when they brought trains to the African plains.” I chuckled a little at the fact that a simple folk song would touch him so deeply, but later, I realized why that happened: because for him, it was one of the songs of home.

I love it when I see Christians experience the same thing as we sing about Heaven — our home with the God whom we love. Our hymns about Heaven are not all of equal writing quality or depth of thought, but  even the simple ones often still get to us. And I think that the reason is because they are our songs of home. We, like my South African friend who now lives in Arkansas, are citizens of two places at the same time; people who can feel at home in two places, but only fully at home in one of those places. And the songs of home draw our hearts toward where they belong.

So, “sing to me of heaven,” brothers and sisters, and may those songs draw us closer and closer to our Father’s heart. And if we all get a little emotional when we hear those songs, I’d say we’re all the better for it.

- Dan Lankford, minister

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