A place called home - Thought for the Day BBC Radio 4

Delivered live on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, 3 November 2023. You can listen to the audio here on BBC Sounds.

Good morning,

My husband and I love talking about home improvements: a loft conversion, complete with sparkly en-suite; a kitchen makeover. A garden room. None of these are on the horizon, but we can dream.

This week, as Storm Ciaran raged, I felt grateful simply walking into the hallway of our home. As I shut the door on the howling wind and entered the safety, shelter and sanctuary of our four walls.

 This place strewn with children’s toys, a carpet well-trodden with the stuff of life; this place where I have paced up and down trying to get my babies to sleep, where I’ve laughed till I cried with friends round the dinner table. This place called home.

The desire for aesthetic improvements seems insulting in the face of homes flooded during storms because of climate change, or amid the tragic tales of domicide we see in conflicts around the world.

Like 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, the Israeli woman recently released as a hostage taken by Hamas from her kibbutz, after they burned her home during the horror of October 7th. Or the pregnant mum I met in the West Bank a decade ago, sitting with her seven other children in the rubble of their house, hours after it had been demolished by the Israeli defence force.

 When sacred buildings – places of worship that have stood for centuries - are destroyed we feel a collective sense of mourning. These great buildings that house the identity and hope of faith groups and communities.

Something stirs in me when I see images of St Paul’s Cathedral standing tall amongst the bombed-out buildings during the Blitz. Representing spiritual as well as physical resilience.

It's never just about bricks and mortar – essential though they are for our wellbeing. Our physical surroundings testify to our spirits, too.

When Jesus says the temple will be rebuilt in three days, his opponents think he’s talking about the structure that took 46 years to build. Instead, he’s referring to his future resurrection; the hope-filled event that will carry a community of billions of followers for 2,000 years.

Recently, I stood looking at the rubble of my own church. We had demolished it deliberately; our old, decrepit building torn down to make space for a new project in the heart of south-east London.

A place for parents and toddlers to spread their wings and find community among other sleep-deprived souls; a place for those in our bustling neighbourhood to get coffee and good food; a place for us to meet to worship God. But also a place with 33 flats above it for homeless young people. A place of safety and shelter. A place for them to call home.

Photo by Pablo Guerroro on Unsplash.