Homesick for Heaven

Good morning, Friends! It’s so good to see you all again today!

My wife and I got back from vacation late Thursday. The last part of our trip of course was the hardest. We had to drive 600 miles in one day, from Syracuse, New York, down to High Point. It took 11 hours, and we were pretty tired by the time we pulled into the driveway.

We had a great time on our vacation. I’ll try to post some pictures on Facebook in a few days.

We didn’t do the things that many other people do on vacation. We didn’t go on board any cruise ships. We didn’t go to any theme parks.

We visited family and friends. We went on long walks. There was no internet, and no TV. Our closest neighbor is almost a mile away.

We had lots of animal neighbors – birds and deer and coyotes. Didn’t see any bear or moose this trip. It’s a whole different experience.

I thought today we could start with a reading you’ve all heard before. It’s about how this world got started, and how God was here at the beginning.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

Genesis 1:1-5

If you’re familiar with this story, you know that God went on, and created the earth and sea, the sun, moon and stars. God created all the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, the different creatures and plants. And at the end of every day, God looked at all that he had done, and God saw that it was good.

We spend so much of our time complaining about the world, trying to control the world and change it and take things from it. We spend so little time, stepping back and looking what God has done – time, appreciating the world and just enjoying it.

Our job – the assignment God gave us, from the very beginning – has been to appreciate the world, to try to understand it, to give thanks for the world and be amazed by it.

God made the whole world, and God said that it’s all good. We could spend our whole lives, and not just a few days or weeks of vacation, just marveling at the wonder of it all.

That’s what Sunday is supposed to be about, you know. One whole day, every week, set aside for rest and wonder.

How many of us do that? How many of us really and truly get off the treadmill, take our noses completely away from the grindstone for a full day, and thank God for everything that God created?

That’s kind of what I’ve been doing, for the last month. For a whole month, we didn’t look at the calendar. Hardly even looked at a clock. Never set an alarm.

In the country, your body adjusts, and you wake up at sunrise. The birds start to sing, the sun hits your eyes, and you just wake up naturally.

In the evening, you make supper when you get hungry, not by the clock. Some days we ate around 5:00, some days we didn’t eat till after dark. In the evening, when the dishes were done, we might play a board game, or read a book, or sit by the fire and sing.

When was the last time you and your family sang together? That’s a big complaint I’ve got with the modern world. When I was growing up, our family sang all the time. We sang on car trips. We sang at camp fires and our parents sang us lullabies at bed time. We sang on rainy days, and we sang out on the porch in the evening. I look at kids today, and most of them spend every minute staring at their cell phones. I wonder if their families ever sing.

This summer, the town was replacing a big culvert a few miles up the road, which meant that there was no through traffic. On a busy day, there might be one car an hour going by. Maybe less. We never heard an airplane. We never heard a train whistle, or the horn of any vehicle. The quiet was pretty nice! And on a rainy night, there’s nothing like the sound of the rain on a metal roof.

I always feel like I’m getting lost in a big city. You know what I mean – you go to a store, and you’re one of a thousand customers that day. If you’re out in the street, you could get run over, and not a single person would even know your name. My home town has less than 700 people in it. Our family has been part of the town for close to 100 years.

The farmer up the road came to mow our hay field while we were there. He’s a young man, but I knew his great-grandfather who used come and mow it when I was a boy. That’s five generations on the same family farm. It’s not an easy life, but they love it.

I had to do some business while I was on vacation. Back in 1960, my grandfather bought a piece of forest land, mostly sugar maples. It has a special building, for making maple syrup. When my dad retired, he and a friend of his started making syrup. They got a high school boy to come and help them. When my dad got too old, the boy was grown up, and my dad gave all the equipment to him.

Well, now the young boy is almost 60, and he’s ready to give up making syrup. He’s taken good care of our forest all these years. So, while I was on vacation, I talked with a young guy in his early 30’s. He and his family just moved into the house across the road from our sugar place. He’s made syrup before, and he’d like to do it again.

That’s an important lesson. If you’re good to the land, the land will reward you and bless you. We don’t want to develop it. We’d rather see a new generation take it over, and enjoy the land, and keep that sweet stuff flowing.

One of the things that wasn’t so nice on vacation, was all the smoke in the air. Some days you could hardly see the mountains. There are dozens of huge wildfires burning this summer out West and in Canada. Most of them are out of control, and you can’t believe how big an area is affected.

The Canadian wild fires cover more than 16.5 million acres. That’s over half the area of the state of North Carolina. That’s more than the total area of the entire state of West Virginia. All gone up in smoke. All the way home, across eight separate states, we saw the smoke. Coming down the mountains and crossing the Blue Ridge, the smoke was so heavy that we couldn’t see the mountains on either side of us.

I hate to think about all the people, in cities all across the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Atlantic states, who are suffering because of the fires. The news says it’s so bad, it’s like smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

On a better note, you may remember that our Bible study, for the last 6 months here at Springfield, has been reading the book of Genesis.

I’ve been wanting for years to write a book about Genesis, and the Bible study group helped me this year, by reading a fresh chapter of the book every week. During vacation, I spent 4 or 5 days going over the manuscript – making corrections, making things clearer, cutting and adding to try and make it better book. I’d like to try and get it printed this coming year, and share some of these ideas with other people. I’ll keep you posted!

But I didn’t spend all day, every day, writing. A couple of times we drove over to New Hampshire to the White Mountains, to a state park which is one of our family’s favorite places.

When the glaciers came through, they carved out a narrow canyon on one of the mountains. It’s a beautiful place, and we go there every summer. Farther down stream, the water’s carved out a beautiful basin in the rock, about 30 feet across, with waterfalls and streams above and below it. We spent hours, just watching the water, enjoying the natural beauty of God’s world.

We love you all, and we love Springfield. But when we come back from vacation, it’s kind of like we’re homesick for heaven.

We had some great times on vacation, visiting our son and his wife. That’s one of the things we miss most living here in North Carolina – being so far away from our family. Seeing our son and his wife was such a blessing!

Some of you know this – when you see your kids, as grown-up adults, and you see how well they’re doing, how honest and kind and generous they’ve grown up to be, there’s almost no better feeling.

We’re so proud of both our kids, and we pray for them every day. But seeing them, and hearing them, and spending time together – that’s such a blessing.

We also spent a couple of days with my younger brother and his wife. We visited my best friend from high school, who stood for us at our wedding. We visited my wife’s babysitter from when she was a girl – her babysitter is 95 years old now, but her mind is clear.

She always sends my wife a birthday card, and she always remembers our anniversary. This year, she put a $20 bill in the card, and told us to go out for a milkshake together. So we did! It’s a blessing that she remembers us, when we were young. And it’s a blessing, that we could visit her, when she’s really old.

I’ve used the word blessing a lot today. Part of what I’m trying to say is, take time to enjoy more of your blessings. Don’t be a slave to work, or a prisoner of your limitations. God wants every one of us to be blessed. Not just to get along. Not just to survive somehow. But to be blessed.

Jesus once said, “Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14)

He also said, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:37-39)

God created this world, with enough life, and enough goodness, for everyone to share. We don’t always need to be having more, more, more. We need to realize that what we have, is enough.

Part of being blessed, is simply opening our eyes, and seeing the blessings that are all around us. And part of being blessed, is trying to share our blessings with other people, every day.

I want to tell you one more little story from our vacation. Joyce and I grew up, very close to Niagara Falls. We’ve both been there, many times.

But this year, my wife said, “We’ve never been to Niagara Falls, at night. Let’s go!” So we went.

At night, Niagara Falls is lit up by huge colored flood lights that shine from all the way across the river. It’s so different from seeing the Falls in the day time. All the colors of the rainbow, and the colors keep changing.

In a way, it’s kind of scary. You’re standing close to the edge, by the railing, and just a few feet away, there’s this thunder. Niagara Falls collects the water from half a continent. More than eight million gallons of water goes over the Falls every second. You can’t imagine the amount of water.

There was a full moon the night we were there, and the moonlight on that incredible, immense flow of water was almost terrifying.

And then the colored light – the amazing colored light – lighting up the Falls and the mist and changing from moment to moment.

And then there were the people. People come from all over the world to see Niagara Falls. It’s a blessing we share with all these visitors. We saw women wearing Indian saris, and women wearing burkhas. We saw guys with turbans and long beards. We saw a young Mennonite farm couple, pulling a wagon with their daughter in it.

A couple from China asked us to take their picture, with the glory of the Falls behind them, to show their family at home. At one point, we saw an Orthodox Jewish couple – the man wearing a velvet skull cap and the woman with a long-sleeved dress. They were standing right next to a Muslim couple. In some other part of the world, maybe they would have been enemies. But standing next to one of the most amazing natural sights in this country, they were being blessed, together.

So, we’re back from vacation, but we don’t want to get over it. Somehow, we want to keep that sense of blessing, for as long as we can. Other things call for our attention, every day, but we don’t want to forget what God has been telling us for the past month.

I want to leave you with this question. Are you too busy to be blessed? Are you so busy looking at other things, that you don’t have time to look around you, and see the world that God has made?

Do you have time, or can you make time, to look around you and see the goodness of God’s world? If you can’t see it, do you need to get away for a while?

Every day, while we were on vacation, rain or shine, we always spent as much time as we could, sitting out on the porch and watching the sunlight on our field. Every night, if the sky was clear, we would go out onto the deck, and look up at the stars for a while.

You may call that doing nothing. But doing nothing can be a prayer. Doing nothing can be a blessing, when your life has been too busy all year long.

God made the world, and God made the world good. God wants every one of you to be blessed, in so many different and wonderful ways.