When I was growing up, I lived on a wooded hillside in rural Idaho. I had lots of room to to play in. I read books about pirates, cowboys, smugglers, giants and dragons and knights, and then imagined myself there. I lived between two hills... just like the White Witch in Narnia. In the winter I could easily pretend (with 3 feet of snow) that it was always winter, but never Christmas. Thankfully Christmas DID come, no witches really lived nearby, and all the white stuff melted away the following spring, and I could reclaim all the childhood haunts.
Then something Terrible happened. We moved away my 5th grade year. Suddenly we were in a trailer court in a high desert town in Northern California. New things to see, more friends to play with, but horrible homesickness. I missed the woods. I missed the lonely secret places. As I moved on in life and adjusted, I would occasionally have a bad day--being picked on by the bully, or one of the other countless middle school crises--and I felt that longing wash over me. This isn't my home. If only I could get back to Idaho, I thought.
I was like Bastian in the 80's movie, The Never-Ending Story. I was insecure in the world I lived in. I had a "Fantasia" of my own. It was Idaho. Or at least, it was my best memories of Idaho.
As I grew older, I finally had a chance to go back after high school. The eyes of a nineteen-year-old saw an Idaho that was achingly familiar and yet disappointing at the same time. I had thought this was a refuge, my own private Rivendell I could always return to. But the elves had moved away. There was no Last Homely House. There was a river between two hills, and a few ruins. Mostly there were trees growing up where my living room had been. Cedars in the kitchen. Pines where the porch used to be.
All this drove home to my adult eyes one thing: this wasn't Home. There's no place like Home, on this earth. There is a home Somewhere, but all the best places I have ever loved and then lost were only green shadows of that First Shelter, the original pine needle paradise. A Heavenly home.
Today my pastor preached on Genesis chapter 23. His main point was that Abraham bought a piece of land in Canaan in faith to bury his wife Sarah, believing in God's promise that the whole land would go to his offspring one day. The Promised Land of Canaan did go to his descendants 400 years later... but the ultimate fulfillment of this promise goes beyond a place you can walk over. It's a future reality, a new world that the Lord will purify and present as a new Home for His people. Heaven, our Home, will come down to Earth. The perishable will clothe itself with the imperishable. It will be Paradise Regained. That is my Home. My place of refuge is by God's side.
So as I travel to New England next week, there will be a strong attraction for me to focus on the place where the Pilgrims lived, worshipped God, and died, and I might reverence these places too much. No place on earth is hallowed more than the heart of Him who stays committed to the Lord. The Bible calls Christians temples of the living God. (1 Corinthians 6:19) What a privilege to walk by faith wherever I go. It is a Person I long for, not a Place in this present world. I am free to enjoy all, but worship no national treasure or historical shrine. I am bound for the Promised Land, and one day I will cross over the Jordan River of death and take possession of it, and see Jesus. Then I will know I am truly, forever, Home.
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