Homesick

Lynn, the landlord farmer who grew up in this house, stopped by today with one of his famous fruitcakes.  It was in a tiny paper bag with Nora's name and a happy face drawn on it.  Nora was so sweet about it: "Oh, thank you so much for thinking of me.  I'll put this away right away."  She proceeded to remove it from the paper bag, peel off the saran wrap, shaking it off her hand down onto the floor while placing the fruitcake carefully into the fridge.  These are not the kind of fruitcakes you want to use in the annual Fruitcake Toss competition.  Lynn makes really good fruitcakes.

I wonder what it must feel like for him to walk into his house and see my pictures, books, Christmas Tree, Nora's toys thrown to the wind...all of it in the places where he remembers seeing his own train set, Hardy Boys books, 4-H ribbons.  I feel self-conscious as he stands in the kitchen, which is simultaneously Ila's kitchen and my kitchen.  Each of us has a strong love for this place, and it is this love that keeps the roof shingled, the floor swept, the air living and breathing.

I was just reading about homesickness last night--the kind of homesickness you feel because you understand deep inside you, in that place where God dwells, that this earth is not really where you belong.  You yearn for something you've only vaguely recognized.  I suppose it works like a homing device or like E.T.'s heart.  It groans with longing when it is far from what it knows.  It responds autonomically with joy when it is in close proximity to those things it recognizes as being part of our real Home.  It leaps.  It flips.  It swoops.  It falls in love.  It is love, and it opens the front door, the one you'll only walk through once.  Inside us is that key.  I want to know Him, to make a home for Him here within until He takes me through to see what I only saw as through a glass darkly.  A part made perfect.