Heart and Home

If you follow even the traveler's heart for long enough

 it will eventually lead you back to its home.

My third week here has now come to completion. And as third weeks often go on trips, I found myself missing home. Perhaps, along with the third week, being sick and confined to the house for an extended period of time added to a fond desire to see home. Not just Canada nor Edmonton though, but my real home. The little farm in Ontario. That is where my heart leads to; even as I venture into amazing places and try share love and to inspire hope, my heart still goes there. It's where my heart was grown. My childhood thirst was quenched with water from the laundry room tap and the kitchen cooler. My roots go into the Perth county soil that, so many times, I've washed off of my hands after coming into the house from the great outdoors. My mind treasures the memories of sunsets watched from the living room window and of the star-filled skies seen best under the cover of blankets as you drift to sleep on the trampoline in the front yard. My eyes long to see those sights again. My lungs want to breathe the country air. My ears want to hear birds singing and kids playings in the daytime, the chirping of the crickets and the croaking of the frogs from the pond in the night. My voice wants to be heard by other ears that know these sounds. My fingers want to just barely touch the tops of the wheat growing in the field. My hands want to grasp the maple, spruce and cherry tree branches. My feet want to dodge the thistles and pinecones as they run bare on the grass beside the laneway heading towards the house. My legs want to remember what it feels like to jump the cedar rail fence and run through the cornfield. My arms want to remember what it feels like to hug family members in both greetings and farewells.The people who nurtured these roots so that they could grow strong.

But, roots are not developed so that nothing would ever change. Roots are developed so that things can grow and change and reach into new places and to new heights. With a thankful heart my life builds upon the memories that I am so privileged to have. And may it be considered an honor to now be a part of trying to make the soil fertile for others. So that the world in which others are now growing their roots, may be good to them. That the water they drink will be refreshing and pure. That the sights and sounds they see and hear would be pleasing and not a source of pain or fear. That the roads their feet tread upon would lead to a safe and peaceful home. And that the people they embrace would be healthy, happy and a source of God's deep love in their life.

So as I think back on my home and look forward to when I find myself there again, I thank God for that place, and also I thank Him for where I am now. Regardless of where my heart will lead, may it now be all here, as Jim Elliott once advised. May I find my heart torn when I leave this place. Not because I have been uprooted and replanted. But because I have taken what has been nurtured and grown in me, and allowed it to be woven into the fabric of life here, stitched together with the thread of love. So that when I return to the place of my roots, I am still somehow bound to the people here. So bound in love and solitude in the community of God's children that I find myself unable to sever the tie that binds with a lack of prayer, an abundance of apathy, or complacency in the comforts of home.

May we be bound to all people with the perfect love of God so that we may know and experience fullness in Him together with one heart and, one day, be together in our heavenly home.