Home Part 2
June 3, 2026
Home Part 2
I stood at the kitchen window on a bright, sparkling afternoon and saw Lark on the patio, quietly reading, while our two dogs joyfully romped across the yard behind her. Something in the scene settled me instantly. I felt free… content, grounded… safe… at home.
I almost turned away to tend to more “important” things. But I did not. I stayed. I let the moment have me. There was nothing to fix, nothing to improve, nowhere else to be. Things were simple, whole, and enough. Before moving on, I could only pause, breathe, and whisper, “Thank you, God.” It was not a grand or defining moment. Just a moment, that I noticed and was grateful for. It was a moment I did not rush past. And in that noticing, I was drawn inward—to a quiet place in my soul where gratitude deepens and time morphs. I found myself remembering other homes, other seasons, where this same feeling had found me. Different places. Different people. Yet the same unmistakable sense of settled contentment.
And with it came a quiet awareness: these moments are fleeting. They do not stay—the scenes change. The people change. Life moves on. Which makes the noticing all the more sacred. There’s an old line that rises in me at times like this: “God’s in His heaven—All’s right with the world.”
It comes from Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes, spoken by a young girl with almost nothing, yet full of hope. The full stanza paints a world alive with quiet perfection—dew on the hillside, a lark in flight, morning unfolding just as it should.
The entire stanza is:
"The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his heaven— All’s right with the world.”
And yet, if we’re honest, even in special moments of deep peace, all is not right with the world. Even as I stand at my window there is grief everywhere. There is violence. There are families broken in ways that cannot be undone. The headlines remind us daily: suffering is not rare, but constant. Bloodshed is daily. Disease is daily. Loss is daily. So, the question lingers: If all is not right with the world… is God still in God’s heaven?
I was speaking about this just yesterday with a dear man, a descendant of enslavement. His perspective carried both weight and wisdom. Reflecting on the suffering of the past and present, he said something that has stayed with me:
“We do not see far enough. We do not live long enough. We cannot yet understand how it all unfolds. This does not excuse needless suffering or cruelty. But there may be a larger order that somehow holds even what we cannot bear to look at. Not explaining it away and not excusing it but holding it in a way that it is eventually redeemed by God. In ways beyond our limited vision. We cannot yet comprehend this.”
So where does hope come from? Perhaps it begins right here. In the quiet, unremarkable moments when something in us settles… when, for no dramatic reason, we feel held… we are content to not know everything, we trust the mystery, when goodness, mercy, and contentment rise unbidden in the ordinary spaces of our lives. Often, those moments meet us at home, if we are still enough, within our own souls. Maybe these glimpses are not proof that all is right with the world, but reminders that not all is lost, hope exists, and redemption is real.
Spiritual practice & self-inquiry: Can you recall a moment, however small, when you felt, even briefly, that all was well? Stay with it. Let it speak. Does gratitude surface?
Prayer:
Dear God, Thank You for windows and for the grace to pause and look through them. Amen.
