Home, Sweet Home

Ironically, John Howard Payne, composer of "Home, Sweet Home," virtually never had a home of his own.

Though he was born in New York City in June 1791, and passed much of his childhood in East Hampton, Long Island, Payne spent most of his years wandering about the world, homeless, and more often than not, penniless.  From the bankruptcy of his father while he was a student at Union College until Payne's death in Tunis, North Africa, where he served as American Consul, his fabulous career casts fiction in the shade.

As an actor, Payne made his debut in 1809 and for months was the rage of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and then Dury Lane in London.  Later he become a playwright, with its in Paris and London.  But because he lacked business ability, many of his varying successes ended in failure.

In 1821 Payne was sent to debtor's prison in England, and was released only after he managed to slip through the guards and sell one of his plays.  It was with the profits from this play that he went gaily off to Paris to finish an opera little remembered today--but the music of which is still sung all over the civilized world.  That opera was Clari, and the hit tune was the ever-remembered "Home, Sweet Home."

Today, the old gray-singled homestead at East Hampton where Payne spent his boyhood is maintained by the village as a shrine for it was probably this lowly thatched cottage about which the composer wrote so wistfully while homesick in Paris.  To Americans everywhere--as it once was to John Howard Payne--this humble cottage is now cherished as "Home, Sweet Home."

- Roy B. Zuck, The Speaker's Quote Book (Christian Literature Crusade, 1997)

This Is A Way To Help Themselves

Clarence Jordan, a philosopher-farmer in Americus, Georgia, was convinced that poor people living in dilapidated shacks could improve themselves with a little support. “They don’t need charity,” he said to Millard Fuller, who visited Jordan’s church community, Koinonia Farm. “They need a way to help themselves.”

Millard Fuller, thirty, who was nearly a millionaire, was inspired by Jordan to begin what today is a worldwide organization to provide housing for the poor. Habitat for Humanity runs on what he calls “the theology of the hammer.” The group raises money and recruits volunteers to renovate and build homes, which are sold at cost. Mortgages are interest free to qualified recipients. Habitat now builds or renovates twelve houses every day.

 — Ward Williams, 
“Jesus’ Vacation,” PreachingToday.com

Longing For The Everyday Boring Scene

Greta Weissman was among the prisoners in a Nazi death camp.  She recalled an episode one spring when she and her fellow inmates stood at roll call for hours on end, nearly collapsing with hunger and fatigue.  But they noticed in the corner of that bleak, horrid, gray place that the concrete had broken and a flower had poke its head through.  And the thousands of women there took great pains to avoid stepping on it.  It was the only spot of beauty in their ugly and heinous world, and they were thankful for it.

Later in a radio interview, she added: "When people ask me, 'Why did you go on?' there is only one picture that comes to mind.  The moment was when once I stood at the window of the first camp I was in and asked myself if, by some miraculous power, one wish could be granted me, what would it be?  And then, with almost crystal clarity, the picture that came to my mind was a picture at home--my father smoking his pipe, my mother working at her needlepoint, my brother and I doing our homework.  And I remember thinking, my goodness, it was just a boring evening at home.  I had known countless evenings like that.  And I knew that this picture would be, if I could help it, the driving force of my survival."

- Dr. Julius Segal, Winning Life's Toughest Battles (Ivy Books, 1896)

Hoping Mommy's Home

A wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  After two operations and radiation treatment, she showed signs of improvement.  There was hope that she might beat this dreaded disease.  But three years later, her small body succumbed to the insidious growth.  She was survived by her husband and two children who were only three and five at the time of her death.

Immediately after the funeral, the three went for a brief vacation.  When they were pulling the car into the driveway upon their return, the three-year-old boy expressed the hope of everyone in the car, "Maybe Mommy's home."

- Craig A. Smith, Sermon Illustrations for an Asian Audience (OMF Literature Inc., 2004)

An Invitation of Unconditional Acceptance

Longing to leave her poor Brazilian neighborhood, Christina wanted to see the world.  Discontent with home having only a pallet on the floor, a washbasin, and a wood-burning stove, she dreamed of a better life in the city.  One morning she slipped away, breaking her mother's heart.

Knowing what life on the streets would be like for her young, attractive daughter, Maria hurriedly packed to go find her.  On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing.  Pictures.  She sat in the photograph booth, closed the curtain, and spent all she could on pictures of herself.  With her purse full of black-and-white photos, she boarded the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.

Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money.  She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up.  When pride meets hunger, a human will do things that were before unthinkable. Knowing this, Maria began her search.  Bars, hotels, nightclubs, any place with the reputation for street walkers or prostitutes.  She went to them all.  And at each place she left her picture--taped on a bathroom mirror, tacked to a hotel bulletin board, fastened to a corner phone booth,  and on the back of each photo she wrote a note.  It wasn't too long before both the money and the pictures ran out, and Maria had to go home.

The weary mother wept as the bus began its long journey back to her small village.  It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs.  Her young face was tired.  Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear.  Her laughter was broken.  Her dream had become a nightmare.  A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds for her secure pallet.  Yet the little village was, in too many ways, too far away.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face.  She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother.  Christina's eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo.  Written on the back was this compelling invitation.  "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn't matter.  Please come home."

She did.

- Max Lucado, No Wonder They Call Him Savior (Multnomah Press, 1986)