At a time when more and more people are living with housing insecurity, BRF Ministries author Eva Leaf reflects on her own experience of homelessness, and the different ways in which we can feel ‘homeless’.
5 July 2026
Even foxes have holes
Every Tuesday, I volunteer in a Christian community centre. People drop in off the street, and recently a refugee came as well, someone who has escaped great danger. As I talked with this person, their eyes kept drifting, almost like a newborn baby. They kept looking around, but not quite comprehending. The buildings, the culture, the accents added to this person’s sense of confusion and homelessness.
Over the years, I have noticed three different kinds of homelessness, all of which I have experienced. And the first one is obvious – physically not having a home.
The Connection at St Martin in the Fields works with people who are rough sleeping to help them move away from, and stay off, the streets of London. On the Connection website there’s a page devoted to definitions of homelessness, which includes the statement that homelessness is ‘the experiences of people without fixed or safe accommodation’, but also adds that it’s important to remember that ‘homelessness is an experience, not a defining state of being. If we define a person as being homeless we risk reducing their existence to one fact about their life.’
This is so true. I experienced it as a young woman. Through the poor decision of others, I ended up living in a tent and a barn. For two turbulent years, I felt unsafe and I deeply missed a place I could call home. I dreamed of hot baths and warm radiators. I dreamed of a clean place where my pillow wouldn’t get mucked up yet again.
As a Christian, I also felt betrayed. How could God treat his beloved child like that? But as the months dragged on, I learned an essential fact: homelessness didn’t define me, God did. And to him it made no difference if I had an address or not. I was and always would be his beloved child.
I learned an essential fact: homelessness didn’t define me, God did.
Birds have nests
Then I remembered something Jesus said: ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head’ (Matthew 8:20). Jesus knew what it felt like to not have an address. He understood about having no bed and feeling cold at night, but that didn’t define him.
He was always God’s son, no matter what happened to him.
A second experience of homelessness is emotional, where the heart is lost, even though the body has a safe place to stay.
When I arrived in the UK almost 40 years ago, as an immigrant I felt emotionally homeless and lost. The only things that linked me with my home several thousand miles away were the stars and moon in the night sky. I often gazed up at them trying to find an anchor. But, strange to say, what helped me most was something far more down to earth. As I drove through London, I saw signs on almost every pub: ‘Take courage.’ It was as if God knew and he had plastered them everywhere, reminding me that I was right where he wanted me to be. Every time I felt low, I saw another sign which picked me up. It was only later that I learned that ‘Courage’ is a brand of beer!
A death in the family can also cause emotional homelessness. If the person who passes away was that emotional home, that safe place of unconditional acceptance and love, a person can lose their bearings in life. I have also experienced this and have seen it in others. I witnessed one young woman lose her dad, and within a few weeks she had flipped into a marriage with someone she barely knew. She hoped to find a home, but it turned into a disaster.
Emotional homelessness can hit us hard and fast. Jesus experienced this when his mother and brothers ‘went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind”’ (Mark 8:21). But he readjusted the boundaries by asking a profound question: ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother’ (Mark 8:33–35). Jesus redefined home. He shows us that it can also be like-minded people.
Jesus wants to give us a home, someplace safe where we can grow.
Spiritual homelessness
The third kind of homelessness is spiritual. Oh, how I know! After almost 40 years of working with a Christian charity, it was time to step down and retire. Suddenly I felt lost and spiritually adrift, because much of my spiritual life and growth came through my roles and relationships there. But having been cut loose, I drifted away. I had lost the structure and with it went my daily routine with God.
I have also noticed it occasionally in retired ministers. I have watched them flounder as they leave their final church. All along, they have been the pastors, the leaders and caregivers. Now there is no one; it is only them and God. The churches have moved on, but they are left stuck.
Jesus too felt this loss as he hung on the cross. He cried out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:46). It was the end of his ministry. Everyone had left him, and now his Father in heaven turned his back on Jesus as well. It was all too much. Yet, God helped him pull through.
Jesus experienced homelessness in three profound ways: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And he understands when we go through these things. He knows what it costs to lose our anchors in life. Yet, he could move on, because he rewrote the rules, and so can we:
- Physical homelessness doesn’t have to define us. God does.
- Emotional homelessness means that we can change the boundaries. We can ask deep questions, like, ‘Who is my family?’ or ‘Who is my neighbour? (Luke 10:29)
- Spiritual homelessness means asking the deepest of all questions: ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ And as we do, God will rend the temple curtain somewhere, somehow, and we will find a new way to reengage with him.
Jesus wants to give us a home, someplace safe where we can grow. As he said to a crowd of people, ‘How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing’ (Matthew 23:37). Our home is Jesus, where we can feel safe.
Sure, hard times – homeless times – will come, but Jesus comes and taps on the door to our hearts and offers us a home with him and in him.
So, for those who are physically, emotionally, or spiritually homeless, who knock on our church or Christian community centre doors, we smile and pray. We invite them in and offer them a home, with us, with Jesus.
