Author's Note:
I first wrote this post in November 2014. Of course, I have edited this post since I can’t seem to read anything I have written without trying to improve upon it, but the bulk of this post is unchanged from the original. I came upon this post as cold, dreary days, a deepening desire to stay home more, and a recent reread of Mallory Wyckoff’s book God Is has once more turned my thoughts homeward. Mallory’s reflective and beautifully written book leaves the reader ruminating on the characteristics of God and expanding our limited thoughts about God, who is far more than we can imagine. One of her chapters is titled God is Home, and while our language and thoughts are very different, I found this old post and her book resonating with my longing for home.
A Wistful Longing
The sky was overcast and cloudy, and the wind was damp and cold as I drove down long dirt roads to deliver mail to those living in the Texas Panhandle’s rural areas. I usually enjoy the solitude of dusty dirt roads and a landscape that seems to have changed little in the past fifty years. I pass vacant houses, long abandoned, and wonder about the families who once lived there. As I pass historical markers where there were once schools, I think about the children who grew up on these dirt roads. I often smile and wave to those who still call these country houses home, but today, the roads are empty and quiet, yards are bare, and doors are shut against the cold.
Sometimes, I listen to audiobooks while driving; at other times, I drive in silence. I approached a lone windmill that I used as a landmark on a lonely stretch of dirt, and instead of thinking about my customers or the history of this area, I found myself thinking of home. Perhaps it was the chill wind and the approaching rain that had me longing for the comforts of home, or perhaps it was blowing fields of dry grass that reminded me of childhood and simpler times.
The wistful longing brought to mind a particular passage from a much-loved childhood classic, The Wind in the Willows, in which Mole and Ratty are passing through a village on a mid-December evening. As they peer through the windows of the village houses, they are reminded of the comforts of home. “Once beyond the village, … they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, sometime, in the rattle of the door-latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of familiar things greeting us as long-absent travelers….” A similar passage is found in the last paragraph of the last book in Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring series, The Return of the King. “But Sam turned to Bywater and so came back up the Hill as the day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light and fire within, and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected.”
What are we longing for?
For many of us, something about home pulls at our hearts and is difficult to duplicate. It is a place where we are warm and comfortable, surrounded by familiar things, expected and welcomed by loved ones. But is home a place, the people we love, or something more? When we find our hearts filled with longing, is it possible that we are longing for something more than home? C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Is our real longing for an eternal home? Or are we longing for an eternal God? When we long for the comfort and companionship of home, is there a deeper desire that is awakened within our hearts? C.S. Lewis insinuates that we have an innate desire for heaven, and perhaps he’s right, but if God is omnipresent and not confined by time or space, perhaps our longing is simply for God Himself.
Maybe we get a taste of this longing fulfilled when we cross the threshold of a place we call home, and maybe we also experience longing fulfilled when we enter quiet places and still our hearts in wordless prayer with the one who is heaven. Perhaps in that moment, we enter eternity with the eternal God and catch just a glimpse of home. However, it seems our longing is never more than temporarily satisfied. Maybe this longing is simply expanding our hearts for more so that when the time comes, we are prepared for our last journey.
Beckoning us home
We know that all things in this linear age are temporal and that, as Gandolf tells Pipin in the movie The Return of the King, “Death is simply another path we all must eventually take.”
Gandolf’s description of that journey is actually taken from a dream Frodo has in the house of Tom Bombadil in Tolkien’s first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Still, I like the movie version better with this conversation between Pippin and Gandolf. Gandolf comforts Pippin by saying that in death, “The grey curtain of this world is rolled back and all turns to silver glass and in the distance, a far green country under a swift sunrise.” And I would add that awaiting us on that shore is our one true love, calling us home.
So, whether you catch a glimpse of home on a lonely dirt road, in the quiet stillness of an empty house, or in a room filled with firelight, laughter, warm food, and sweet companionship, I pray you pause and discover that home is more than a place; it is an eternal presence beckoning us to Himself, beckoning us home.