Foreword by Scott Sauls Preface Part I: The Welcome of Home 1. Nostalgia: The Longing for Home 2. Angel in the House: A Brief History 3. Taken In: The First Maker of Home 4. Border Crossings: On (Not) Staying Put 5. Perished Things: And Imperishable Home Part II: The Work of Home 6. A Suffering Servant: The Labor of Love 7. House of God: The Church as Home 8. Love and Marriage: The Routine Work of I Do 9. Saying Grace: Feasting Together 10. Cathedral in Time: A Place Called Rest 11. City of God: Finally Home Acknowledgments Study Guide Notes
To be human is to long for home. Home is our most fundamental human longing. And for many of us homesickness is a nagging place of grief. This book connects that desire and disappointment with the story of the Bible, helping us to see that there is a homemaking God with wide arms of welcome—and a church commissioned with this same work. "Many of us seem to be recovering the sacred, if ordinary, beauty of place," writes author Jen Pollock Michel. "Perhaps we're reading along with Wendell Berry, falling in love with Berry's small-town barber and Jayber Crow's small-town life. . . . Or maybe we're simply reading our Bibles better, discovering that while we might wish to flatten Scripture to serve our didactic purposes, it rises up in flesh and sinew, muscle and bone: God's holy story is written in the lives of people and their places." Including a five-session discussion guide and paired with a companion DVD, Keeping Place offers hope to the wanderer, help to the stranded, and a new vision of what it means to live today with our longings for eternal home.
Jen Pollock Michel is the author of Teach Us to Want and is a regular contributor to Christianity Today and Moody Bible Institute's Today in the Word. She earned her BA in French from Wheaton College and her MA in literature from Northwestern University, and she belongs to Redbud Writers Guild and INK. Wife and mother of five, Jen lives in Toronto, Canada, and is an enthusiastic supporter of HOPE International and Safe Families.
