by Scott H. Northrup
Last week I made a long journey back to my home town on the high plains of Colorado to visit my aging parents. Dad had just been placed into a nursing home, and Mom was spending most of her time at the facility, her own health failing as well. As I drove into town, I thought about a song I used to love so much, and that I had always associated with going back to my place of origin. It was that old John Denver song, "Hey, it's good to be back home again."
As I entered the tiny house of my boyhood on that familiar street, that place of beginnings of my earthly life wrapped with so many memories, there was a strange and empty silence. I wanted to allow myself to slip into that familiar warmish balm of melancholy and bask there as I had so many times before, but I dared not. For I knew, lurking beneath the waves of remembrance were hidden reefs, sharp emotional pangs that would stab at my very soul, intense longings to hold on to things that are passing away. For it had really begun to dawn on me - I can never go "back home again," at least not in this mortal life.
As silly as it seems, I had somehow thought my parents would always be there for me, always there to dote on their boys, always there to be a safe haven and sanctuary. Make Mom and Dad proud - that had always been a driving force to excel in life.
I drove my rental car back across the prairies of Colorado to the airport, with the distant mountains never seeming to get closer, the wind rippling the prairie grass, now in full flower after rain. I remembered what the psalmist wrote, "As for man, his days are like grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him." As I listened to my favorite praise music, the song came on the CD, "Home is Heaven." Meditating on those verses, and gently wafted by the music, my spirit began to soar into that ever new, ever fresh dimension of eternal being. I was lifted with giant unseen wings into the very heart of God, my true home. For a few blissful moments I was caught up within the Everlasting Arms. "For You, O Lord, have been our dwelling place in all generations, even before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the world, even from everlasting to everlasting."
I have had to keep learning the same lesson over and over again, but the Teacher never tires of me or loses patience. For He has taught so many others who have gone before the same lesson. Don't try to cling to or base your hope on a world which is passing away. For all that we can see with our eyes is temporary, but that which is unseen is eternal. For this momentary light affliction we suffer, as we strive to follow after the heart of God in this passing world, is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comprehension.
I had come home. And I knew that the best is yet to be. "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be Thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home."
@ copyright 2005 by Scott H. Northrup. All rights reserved.