Heading home

I'm interested this morning in the story of Abram, again, for I've had two days to reflect upon our massive, long, injurious trip to Eunice, Kinder, Iota and all crawfish paddies in between. For those not in the know, my wife Mary and I, who celebrated 28 years of, uh, bliss yesterday, drove to see our new parsonage-church-parish-place of worship and such. We spent 14 hours on the trip and I believe I've pinched a nerve in my shoulder blade at some point, but such is the way of Turnerdom these days. Body parts break, but I wander on.

I'm not quick, but I sense a pattern in Abram's life, and the lives of Abram's blood-line. Check this out:

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

Generations later, we find this: Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Harran, they settled there.

Seems they followed the rainbow where ever the winds blew. But what they were looking for was a place to settle, a place to call their own, a place that they could be fulfilled in.

Till finally: So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

I was thinking today about where I have come from, as much as where I am headed. I barely know how I got to this place, and I thought perhaps I had settled, but here we go again. Don't know if that's the last place, in fact it probably isn't, but this I know (and Abram learned), God already is there. We pack, we go, we establish, we pack, we go.

The key in all of the above is Abram went, as the Lord has told him.

Life isn't exactly blind staggering until one finds a morsel, but it is making decisions about where and when we go that turn out to be good or bad. I've had many great friends lately who have decided their business can't hold them any longer. So in their late 50s, they've struck out again, away from the newspaper business into futures that are unclear.

We, none of us, know -- absolutely know -- what lies ahead. But clearly if one is led the path is much, much easier. How one could argue that, I don't know. I only know I am a ship on a foggy night, but on occasion, really just on occasion, I see the lighthouse shining a light so bright I know I can get home safely.

That's my life. That's our life. That's where we're headed, home, and we're closer today than we were yesterday. Home, like it was to Abram, is where God is. Heaven isn't Iowa, friends, it's where God is. And one visit to Eunice, Kinder, Iota leads me to believe God is there.

Isn't that what most of us need? Isn't that what most of us want, really? That's home, and we're heading there.