O: Ordinary Office Becomes a Familiar Home (An Everyday Miracle)

   The Office, a television sitcom produced by NBC, made us laugh and brought us to tears as it revealed the small miracles that take place every day in the most ordinary places. The series finale provided viewers with many tender moments which captured the philosophy behind the entire show. For example, Andy Bernard mused, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” And Pam, a very ordinary sort of heroine, delivered her closing line: “There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things.”

But it was Creed, the homeless man turned office nobody, who really said it all: “No matter how you get there or where you end up, human beings have this miraculous gift to make that place home.”

Troy Campbell, a social scientist at Duke University, commented that this television show captured an actual phenomenon in human psychology: no matter what their surroundings, human beings have a tendency to group together and make their environment – whatever it is – begin to feel like home.[1] Give us enough time, and we can make even the most unwelcoming places feel so familiar that we grow attached and find it hard to leave when the time comes.

This can be a good thing, but it can also work against us.

Why do we find it so difficult to move to another location? To sell our house, even when it’s falling apart? To take that new job, even though the old one stinks? To shed our old habits and live the way God intended for us to live?

Because we’ve become comfortable right where we are – and the thought of embracing something unfamiliar terrifies us.

But beware of growing too attached to this world. In Hebrews 13:14, Paul reminds us that “this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.”

This life? It’s temporary. It may feel like home, but we’re just passing through. Keeping this in mind will set us free to embrace change and look forward to the day when we reach the one thing we all truly crave: our eternal, permanent home in Heaven – the place we truly belong.

 

Temporary Home – by Carrie Underwood

This is our temporary home, it’s not where we belong
Windows and rooms that we’re passing through
This is just a stop on the way to where we’re going
I’m not afraid because I know
This is our temporary home

 

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[1] Campbell, Troy. “The Office Finale’s ‘Miraculous’ Quote – The Scientific Truth Behind It.” The Huffington Post (May 21, 2013).

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