HOME! SWEET HOME!

Cover of sheet music for the 1914 publication of "Home Sweet Home", composed by Henry Bishop, lyrics by John Howard Payne.

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Think about this for a minute.
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Where do you look forward to going after a hard day's work? When you are not feeling well, where do you want to be most? After a trip or a long vacation, what looks good to you? What is your shelter on a stormy day? When you think about parents and childhood, what immediately comes to mind? Where do you retreat to find rest from the toils and annoyances of life? In all the world, where do you feel the most comfortable? If you are lucky, where does your sweetheart live? .

The answer to all those questions, of course, is "HOME" with its oh-so-familiar cracks, creaks, dents and characteristics known only by you. Home is warm! Home is safe! Personally, home is my sanctuary in every aspect of my life. It is my favorite place!
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Oh sure, I enjoy travelling and visiting new places but I do less and less of it as the years pass. In truth, I have everything I need at home. The lure of other places pales in comparison to my desire to be home. I am sure it is that way for most readers of Wrights Lane.
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The word home touches every fibre of the soul and strikes every chord of the human heart. Nothing but death can break its spell. What tender associations are linked with home? What pleasing images and deep emotions it awakens. It calls up the fondest memories of life and opens in our nature the purest, deepest, richest gush of consecrated thought and feeling.
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So many expressions have been coined around home.
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-Home sweet home.
-Home is where the heart is.
-Home is where you hang your hat.
-It takes a lot of livin' to make a house a home.
-There's no place like home.
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Essays, poems and songs have been written about home, the most popular being the 150-year-old song "Home! Sweet Home!"
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"Mid pleasures and palaces though we roam,

Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."

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Sung like a hymn but originally a secular song, Home! Sweet Home! is a story about somebody going away from home, roaming around, falling on hard times, and then going back home to get a soothing caress from mother and a fond smile from father.

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None of us were yet around at the time, but history records that some 20,000 people gathered in old Castle Garden, New York, to hear Jennie Lind sing, as no other songstress ever had, the sublime compositions of Beethoven, Handel and other music masters. In the middle of her performance it seems that the Swedish Nightingale had a flash of nostalgia. She began to think of her home and paused briefly before pouring forth, with deep emotion, "Home! Sweet Home!"

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The audience could not stand it. An uproar of applause stopped the music. Tears gushed from those thousands like rain.

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Beethoven and Handel were forgotten. After a long pause Jennie resumed the song, her voice seemingly coming from heaven, almost angelic. It was one of those special moments and it was the word home that bound, as with a spell, 20,000 souls that day.

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When we look at the simplicity and brevity of "Home! Sweet Home!" we are moved to ask, what is the charm that lies concealed in this classic song? The answer is easy. Next to religion, the deepest and most endurable sentiment in the human soul is that of our feelings for home. Every heart vibrates to this theme.

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Home has an influence which is stronger than death. It is law to our hearts, and binds us with a spell which neither time nor change can break.

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For me, it is an inspiring hope that, when we separate from this earth, there is an eternal home awaiting us on the other side. Sweet home! Beautiful home! Glorious home! Peaceful home! Home with each other! Everlasting home!.

Through the grace of God, we will always have a place called home.