a retro thought for the present about our future

I was looking through some of my older, pre-blog journal entries. By that I mean things that I may have blogged about had such a thing existed, but as such it was just me, my computer, and some friends I shared an e-mail group with.

This one comes from early March of 2000. It is on the heels of a major accident I was involved in when I was on a trip from Michigan to Chicago and got slammed into a cement guard rail on the highway after a truck cut me off. It was a life changing experience in many ways, and I found myself trembling for several days afterward.

Well I'm back home today after Chicago and my accident on the highway. I must say - it's been a good learning lesson for me. I started out on Monday morning, asking God to teach me something this weekend... and He did. (You know - God has a funny way of packaging answers to those kinds of prayers.)

Anyway...

When I arrived to my street, I pulled up to about 50 feet away from my house. Just enough for me to drink it in, while at the same time enough distance so that Katie wouldn't know I had gotten back just yet. I felt like God wanted to teach me something there.

So as I sat in my decapitated Jeep, hands on the steering wheel, I was reminded again of the incredible blessing it is to come home.

Home.

What an incredible word. When you think of the word, what images come to your mind?

Home.

After wiping away my tearful eyes, I pulled into the driveway and gave three honks - a sort of "car language" my wife and I share, 3 honks signifying "I---Love---You." She ran out and wrapped her arms around me and we embraced for moments of eternity.

That is, until she said with a smile (over my shoulder), "i...can't...breathe..."

You know, it's an awesome thing to come "home." And God has shown me but a glimpse of the incredible Home we will someday go to. He reminds us through His servant Paul in Philippians 3:20-21 that our citizenship is in heaven. Or in other words, that is our home.

Heaven... our (intended) Home.

In another verse (1 Peter 2:11), Christians are described as "aliens" - or in other words, “we're just visiting.” This world is not our home.

I say it again, this world is not our home.

The things... the people... everything around it and in it will all pass away.

But...

my Home in Heaven will not. And someday my joy will be being welcomed into a new Home with the eternal embrace of Christ, wrapping Himself around me, and that feeling of relentless warmth will consume our every square inch.

Until I finally tell Jesus, with tears in my eyes... and a smile...

"i...can't...breathe..."

I wonder... does it really take a near-death experience for us to have a healthy perspective like that?

Or might you and I be able to engage in that today... minus the crash?

Why does it always take a funeral or a dangerous moment with our own mortality to get us to think about the stuff that really matters in the first place?

Hmm.