Home has been on my mind lately. Perhaps it’s because we sold my father’s house — the place of my childhood. I cut grass there, climbed trees, and sat with friends on the patio. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Ezra, Nehemiah, and Ezekiel — stories of exile and return. When the Israelites lost the temple, they created the synagogue, finding new ways to be at home in a foreign land.
Our first home is the womb, a place of nourishment and vibration. We are shaped for it, and it for us. Then we’re birthed into a harsher world, always seeking that sense of safety again. Maybe our lifelong task is learning to re-create that home in new spaces and seasons.
In The Atlantic, Nick Miroff wrote about an ICE raid on Chicago’s southeast side. Agents descended by helicopter, tearing through a building like in an action movie. Inside, they zip-tied residents and dragged them to the curb — even a Black American man sleeping on the floor because he owned nothing. Thirty-seven arrests were made; only two people were Venezuelan. He begged to be recognized as a citizen. He was processed and released.
That story cuts across race, class, and citizenship. It exposes how easily compassion can collapse. It also forces us to ask what home truly means when it can be taken away in an instant.
Migrants know this lesson well. Forced to leave home, they carry it within them — through food, language, and community. Some seek familiar landscapes, like the German immigrants who settled in parts of America that resembled their homeland. Home is not only a place; it is people, memories, and belonging. It bears our shape.
I believe in law and order. But I’m uneasy when the law shifts its terms — when a valid visa yesterday becomes a crime today. We should catch violent offenders, not unleash helicopters for expired driver’s licenses.
Home, at its core, is where compassion still matters—where people are seen as human, not disposable. When we lose that, no one truly has a home.
Rev. Dr. Craig Howard
