Are you a traveler? An adventurer? We enjoy traveling. We especially like to tent camp in places like the Great Smoky Mountain National Park or Rocky Mountain National Park. We also enjoy Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, where we camp not far from the beach. Taking in all the beautiful sights, eating food cooked over a campfire, drinking cowboy coffee and then hiking for hours on trails. It's just invigorating and relaxing and we've piled up a mental library of family memories on these annual excursions.
But do you know the best part of traveling? Getting home! Pulling into the driveway is a rewarding experience. Seeing familiar sights, but with renewed appreciation and then crossing over the Home Sweet Home doormat, opening the back door and walking inside, smelling the familiar smell of home. It's nice, an experience that's hard to explain. I guess some would call us 'homebodies.'
I'm blessed to have been raised in a family that values togetherness, family, and a simple, yet comfortable and safe home and environment. We've tried to provide that same thing to our now-grown kids, realizing that not everyone has the opportunity of enjoying an intact family with those they love surrounding and supporting them. We never take that for granted. Maybe that's why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Our family is not perfect and things aren't always idyllic, but God is faithful and has blessed us.
I wonder if you also do what I'm about to explain? As I think about things, despite our blessings, my mind goes to things that are less than perfect, relationships that could be stronger, struggles and health issues that loved ones go through. You wonder why do bad things happen to good people? Why is there such suffering? Why are things unjust? Why is life so unfair? The short answer is we live in a fallen world. Ever since sin entered the world, things have been this way, with pain, toil, sorrow, sickness, parting, and death burdening us. Can you imagine what it must have been like in the Garden before sin?
For the believer, there is a future glory waiting. There is a coming Homecoming that will make the "pulling into the driveway after a trip" joy seem petty and trite. The best way to illustrate this is from a story I heard that Dr. Criswell, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, wrote of:
A faithful missionary couple returned to the United States on the same ship that carried Theodore Roosevelt home from a safari that he had been on in Africa. A mob of reporters and well-wishers were on the dock, waiting to see Teddy Roosevelt after he got off the ship from his safari. Nobody was there to greet the missionary couple who had returned home after serving on the mission field their entire lives in Africa.
Later that night in their simple hotel room, the couple talked about arriving back and the husband was downcast. "It isn't fair," he said to his wife. "Mr. Roosevelt comes home from a hunting trip and the entire country is waiting to greet him. We come home after years of service on the mission field in Africa, and nobody was there to greet us."
And then his wife answered, "Honey, we aren't HOME yet."
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:20
Are you homesick?
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