The Road Home

"O Lord, Thou has been my dwelling place through all generations. From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God."1

My wife, Ida, taught school for over 30 years. Her school was in Gresham, a small town to the east of Portland. She always drove on Division Street, a busy, fast street, but with many stop lights. Occasionally, I tried to get her to take side streets. "Mill Street ends up on the same street as your school. It has only three or four stop signs and only one stop light Travel is slower, but steadier," I argued. She would have none of it since she is a creature of habit.

My father, on the other hand, was an explorer. We always took odd routes, side streets, byways. Once we left the main highway, we traveled over a hill and discovered a beautiful valley full of palm and eucalyptus trees. It was shaded, an oasis in the semi-desert of San Diego's back country. Another time, we headed east from Highway 395 toward the South end of Mono Lake. This is a salt lake with a volcanic island in the middle. In our '54 Ford we bumped over rough roads, fording a shallow stream, stopping only when the road ended. On the sandy beach, small minarets of stone aggregate grew. They were about 18" high. Vandalizing, we took three of them. Now it is a state park and the stone statues have grown to over six feet. Another time, we left an east-west highway and headed south into the desert. Coming upon a sagging, rusty barbed-wire fence. A weathered sign proclaimed it the border between the US and Mexico. Turning around, we got stuck. It was a bit frightening since we knew what heat could do to the human body. We also knew, even in those days, that border-crossings were common and those traveling weren't always friendly.

The one thing my father and my wife have in common is that their road always led home. Whether traveling only familiar streets or whether it involved getting lost and stuck, the end destination was always home. Home means rest, comfort, privacy, familiarity. It is, someone once said, "where the heart is." Paul puts it this way, "...the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace."2

Home: Life and peace, where the heart is at rest. What a perfect definition of heaven--at rest, finally, within Him who is Home.1 Laying down this mortality and taking up immortality, setting aside this perishable and putting on the imperishable,3 we enter into that Being who is Light. We snuggle down, content as a full-bellied baby. We learn His language and begin an eternity of deep communion. What is now a vague shadow becomes sharp-edged, clearly focused. What we once intuited in muted experience becomes distinct and unfiltered.

Though we take different roads, we end up in the same place--rather, in the same Being. One takes the familiar, the other takes a rambling rabbit trail. One sticks to the routine and ordinary. Another takes the side roads, rarely-traveled, rutted sand tracks. One takes dangerous, perhaps even destructive, paths. The other requires paved streets with distinct lane markings.

All roads end up Home.

3/19/18

?