Ring the Bell - Leading you Home

 

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When I was 10 years old we moved out to the country.  We had five acres of wooded land to roam around on.  Five acres may not sound like much to you, but to us, it was like the Hundred Acre Wood where Christopher Robin and his friend Winnie the Pooh found many adventures awaiting.  It's where I killed my first wood duck and many fox squirrels.  It's where we built many forts and camps where we hunkered down against imaginary foes.  It contained sassafras trees from which we made gumbo file from the roots and sassafras tea from the roots and where we picked mayhaws for jelly making.

There was one drawback, for my mom, at least.  This was 25 years before cell phones came on the scene.  If we were needed, how would our parents contact us when we were skirmishing with enemy troops in our many battles?  This communication problem was solved when Dad erected a cast iron bell mounted on a 4x4 post.  If Mom needed us, the bell would ring, the peals loudly echoing through acres of long leaf pine, and we were instructed to come running home.  There was no excuse for not hearing the bell.  We didn't call it the Liberty Bell.  It actually cut into our freedom, but one important thing it did was to call us home.

Almost 50 years later, we find ourselves modern people with modern problems, diversions and distractions.  Our past, our common point of reference often seems so far away, so distant that it seems an impossible endeavor - this quest to go home.  Thomas Wolfe famously said, "You can't go home again."  What he meant is that we've changed and our old home place has changed and so it's impossible to go back home to that nostalgic place in our memory to experience what we cherished.  But is this true?  Can we not return "home?"  I'm thinking of my childhood home, but I'm also thinking in a broader sense of home - that gathering point.

As we look around us and see things change so that many of the values and mores of our childhood seem foreign or quaint or even backwards, outdated and old fashioned, I submit to you that we must listen and return home.  I'm not ashamed to say that the Bible is like that cast iron bell that calls us home, that rings out to those that have ears to hear, to come home.  Home, figuratively speaking, is Truth.  Home is the bedrock of faith in Christ and His Word.  Home are the values, the old ways, that our fathers and forefathers walked.  There is great wisdom in the old paths.

One Scripture reference that comes to mind is Jeremiah 6:16 which says: "Thus says the LORD: Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls."  The people of Judah were called to return to the Lord, to come back to ways that were tried and true.  Rebellious people back then and yes, today, think the old paths are boring and irrelevant to a modern society.  This call home promises rest for our souls.  Don't we all need rest?

The interesting thing about that call is that it is not mandatory that we answer it.  We have the choice, the free will, to follow or to stray.  The next verse, Jeremiah 6:17 goes on to say: But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not listen.’  

The rest of the chapter tells of the judgment and calamity that would befall them because of their obstinate rejection of His wisdom.  You see, we have free will to make choices, but choices we make set in place an irrefutable law.  We can't insulate ourselves forever from the consequences of our choices.

One day, the Word tells us, the trump will sound and those of the faith will be gathered home.  I can almost hear that bell a-ringing!  God, give us ears to hear.