By: Jack Wyman

“We’re almost there honey!”

Beth would smile at me. “Just two more miles.” She had spent the past three hours keeping me awake.

Maine is a pretty big state. The biggest in New England, by far.

When I led the Christian Civic League of Maine for a decade, one of my jobs was to preach in churches on why Christians should get involved in politics and how they could make a positive difference. Over those ten years, I spoke in over 300 churches. Several more than once. Some of these churches were in Northern Maine, some near the Canadian border.

On occasion, following a Sunday evening service, Beth and I would choose to head for home rather than get a hotel. We traveled in all kinds of weather. There were nights when the snow was so thick it would blind visibility. We had to slow to 20 miles an hour in places. On other nights, the ice made traveling treacherous.

Beth would keep talking to keep me from sleeping, and I’d keep driving. The miles dragged on, the green road signs measuring our progress along I-95. Most of it through the Maine woods. With each passing mile, we drew strength for the remainder of the journey. We were young. It was an adventure.

Finally, we’d see the sign: Waterville. 2 Miles.

No matter how much fun we’d had at the church that night; no matter how warm the reception; no matter how friendly, kind, and generous the people invariably were, we were still anxious to get home, and happy to be there when the car rolled into the driveway.

“You see,” I’d tell Beth, “I stayed awake.” “Yes,” she’d reply, “thanks to me.” We laughed. As I look back on one of the happiest times of our life together, I wouldn’t have traded anything for the experience.

On those long trips to the Northland, we’d stop along the way. But we never confused a rest stop and a convenience store for home. We didn’t stay longer than needed. Who does? No matter the length of the journey, home was always the goal. Nothing else that evening would offer sweet rest, security, joy, relief, and comfort. Dorothy has always been right: there’s no place like home. It’s where the heart is.

Is your heart at home? Your true home? Your true heart?

This world is a mess. It is saturated in chaos, riveted by war and violence, tarnished by greed and dishonesty, and shrouded in hate and confusion. Rampant immorality has made a mockery of God and goodness. Truth is dismissed as an inconvenience, and pride promoted as the way of success. 

Even our conversation has been coarsened; our entertainment trivialized. Civilization has become bored and, in its boredom, degenerate as it seeks to scale the next standard of decency.

In our own lives, you and I must deal with the inescapable curse of sin. Stress, pain, sorrow, sickness, anxiety, fear, doubt, and death itself remind us of our mortality and our frailty.

They can test our faith, challenge our love, and darken our hope. There are so many things we don’t understand; so many things we find difficult to accept; and so many things that seek to undermine our trust in God and tempt us to question our faith.

There’s one thing, as Christians, you and I must realize and never forget: our lives on this earth are a fly speck. Eternity is forever. This world? A mere brief rest stop on our journey toward home.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul explained why we never give up. “Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16) What is the source of this spiritual renewal of our strength and hope? Paul says it has to do with the way we see things; the way we view life and this world.

Paul speaks of perspective.

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long,” he writes. “Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them all and will last forever!” (2 Corinthians 4:17)  

A glory that will last forever!

Home. Our true home. Our eternal home.

Paul tells us to take a second look. “So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen.” (verse 18) Why Paul? Tell us why. How can we not see a 16-year-old boy fighting spreading cancer and not be brokenhearted? Or the devastating human toll of war? Or the crassness, corruption, and cowardice of our politicians; or the destruction of innocent youth by those determined to re-define human sexuality?

Why? “Because the things we now see will soon be gone; but the things we cannot see will last forever.” (verse 18)

Home. Our real home.

“In our Christian pilgrimage,” wrote the English preacher Charles Spurgeon, "it is well for the most part, to be looking forward. Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal. Whether it be for hope, for joy, for consolation, or for the inspiring of our love, the future must, after all, be the grand object of the eye of faith.”

Do you want to have joy in the midst of despair? Hope in the midst of doubt? Courage in the midst of fear? Love in the midst of hate? Then “set your affection on things above, not on the things of earth.” (Colossians 3:2) Look up and then press on. Observed C.S. Lewis:

“Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”

Our affliction here is but for a moment when compared to our “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” 

A foreign visitor once asked a monk, “where is your furniture?”

“Where is yours?” replied the monk.

“But I’m just passing through,” said the visitor.

“So am I,” smiled the monk.

You and me? We’re headed home.

To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.

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