This week I miss Oxford. Actually, I miss just about all of the places I've been this year (not the ferry on the North Sea; I did NOT like the ferry).
The hard part is thinking that, at least for most of those places, I'll never go back. And it's not going in a touristy way and "seeing things" that I miss; it's being able to wake up there and settle in there and do laundry there and take it for granted that you can always make another visit to the Bodleian, or take another walk along the Magdalen bridge, or pick a different night to get ice cream at G&D's.
Worst of all is when I see my UK electrical adapter sticking out of a shoebox in my closet and think, "I may never use that again." It's like somebody died.
There must be some deep lesson to be learned in all this, but I haven't exactly figured it out yet.
6 comments:
When you do figure it out, let me know.
We long for something because we have tasted or experienced in someway that something.
All longings, for the Christian, should in some way remind us of the longing in our hearts to be home with Jesus in eternity, in heaven the place He is preparing for us. That longing should be the most profound longing of our hearts.
We have this longing because we have tasted the beauty of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. As we live in Him, we taste and experience this beauty day by day, and we long for more of Him.
John Piper writes concerning fasting: "We have tasted the powers of the age to come, and our new fasting is not because we are hungry for something we have not tasted, but because the new wine of Christ's presence is so real and so satisfying. The newness of our fasting is this: its intensity comes not because we have never tasted the wine of Christ's presence, but because we have tasted it so wonderfully by His Spirit and cannot now be satisfied until the consummation of joy arrives. So I urge you to join in our fasting, not because you haven't tasted the new wine of Christ's presence, but because you have tasted it, and long, with a deep joyful aching of soul to know more of His presence and power in our midst."
Thanks, Uncle Don!
I know this is not what you want to hear, :) but the travel-longing ("joyful aching") feeling just makes me want to travel more and find more ways of looking at this world God created.
But I think I'll stick around for a while ... He's got a lot going on at home, too.
At the end of the day, we must say good-bye to all of our homes, mustn't we? (You can't ever go home, really.)
As a post-modern; it's easy to dwell on the vaccuum that all this leaving of homes can create. Somedays I just want to cling to that feeling of loss and wrap up in it; a rather pathetic and Saturnine aesthetic of homelessness.
That's not really a Kingdom-centred way of thinking, though. I think what your Uncle (and Piper) are saying is quite true, but it's a truth that's apt to be twisted into that same kind of self-focussed longing. The real truth, the light that shines through the longing, is more of an end-of-the-journey kind of truth that I'm really not able to hold onto quite yet myself.
Time to go walk another thousand miles and slay another thousand foes.
I need to read _Job_ and _Pilgrim's Regress_ again...
Dan,
I think that what my uncle and Piper are talking about is that end-of-the-journey truth about longing for that "better country" from Hebrews 11.
We see glimpses of it here on this earth, and that makes our longing for it stronger -- not because we don't know what it's like but because of our experience here we get to know it better.
And there's definitely a promise of home at the end of the story: "I go to prepare a place for you..." It's just that now when I think about that home I know it's built by the same Creator who made the Alps, and the German countryside in spring time, and lovely English walking-mornings.
And that's pretty exciting.
Number 1, thank you. That's exactly what I intended to say.
The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 1:20-24
"...according to my earanest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Chirst will be magnified in my body whether by life or by death. For to me , to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I cannot tell. For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you."
Paul's deep desire to be home with Christ did not deter him from living more and more for Christ while he remained here on this earth in the service of Christ.
I pray that my longings will motivate me to serve Him with all my heart that He might be glorified in all my life as He is in all the earth. (referring to your Isaiah 6 comment on 9/12)
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