Pilgrims, Strangers, and Wanderers

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than any magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration. -Charles Dickens

When I was younger, before the days of CDs and MP3s, my brother and I listened to dramatized stories on old records or cassette tapes, stories we would play and replay until we knew them by heart and could repeat the lines along with the characters. Fortunately, as we exhausted listening material, they continued to make more, and at some point we acquired the audio version of the abridged Pilgrim’s Progress, part two (we read the book version for part one). The allegory was so lengthy we eventually just replayed our favorite parts, usually the tapes from about the middle of the story; the most exciting parts, we felt, were the parts when the pilgrims were fighting giants, though other parts of their travels and travails merited occasional listening.

 Oddly, it is one of those “other parts” that is one of my favorites now. In the series, on the last cassette, Jim Pappas adapts Bunyan’s ending by quoting Ellen White in words that have always been etched onto a little plaque on a shelf somewhere in my mind. After the narrator paints a word picture of the peaceful land the travel-weary band finally arrives at near the legendary river, he proceeds in his scholarly voice to intone: “On those peaceful plains, beside those living streams, God’s people, so long pilgrims and wanderers, shall find a home.”

Home. By my estimate and memory, the number of residences and moves I’ve experienced totals up to somewhere around 23—the same number as years I’ve been alive. I don’t even know what to call home anymore, so anywhere I stay at for any length of time starts to get referenced as “home.”

What does home mean? It’s one of the first things we ask complete strangers when we meet: “So where are you from?” or “Where’s home for you?” Home. We all know it’s important. It’s part of our identity, the place we claim as ours.

Despite its importance, “home” is difficult to define. I not always sure if it’s quite the place or the people there or maybe it’s a combination of the two, but I feel like it must be related to happiness, security, and stability—anything less just wouldn’t be “home.” And so we long for it, whatever it is, and everything it embodies.

“So where are you from?” asked a gentleman I met at a hostel while backpacking through Europe with my husband, more or less homeless. At a loss, I explained with a smile that I don’t really know—mid-west U.S.A. is the closest I can get. “It’s not where you’re from that matters…It’s where you’re going,” he penned on my crumpled manuscript of signatures I collected as a souvenir of my travels.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly an epiphany, but I found a moment of clarity in his words. It’s okay if I don’t know precisely what to call home, if I’m not sure where to say I’m from, because I do know the part that matters—it’s where I’m going. I'm a pilgrim, not a homeless drifter. I have a home. It’s the place I heard described eloquently by the narrator in his scholarly voice while I lay on the floor of half a dozen different houses, listening to the cassette player, while my brother and were growing up. “On those peaceful plains, beside those living streams, God’s people, so long pilgrims and wanderers, shall find a home.”

Marital Bliss and a Library Trip

I've been married now for three weeks and three days, and it's mostly just what I thought married life would be. Granted, people say the whole magical aura is supposed to fade gently (or not so gently) with time, and clearly time isn't really our marriage's strong point at this juncture, so I have no substantial argument as to why I think we are bound for "happily ever after." However, I have high hopes for the lifetime of happiness everyone so emphatically and repeatedly wished upon David and me the day of our wedding. In spite of hosts of well-wishes, most married people seem to expect that newlyweds are headed for some seriously surprising jolts by matrimony; I, for one, am convinced they are completely correct.

David and I waited in the chilly reception area of the chiropractor's office, seated in straight-backed chairs with the sort of padding and contours that ensure that, by the time the doctor sees you, back pain will be a resounding 'yes.' We had just finished discussing the lack in the English language for a feminine version of the word 'emasculating' when he informed me that he wanted to stop by Aldi on the way home since it wouldn't be out of the way. Now, empirically speaking, the nearest Aldi store was definitely not located "on the way" home. Not empirically speaking, Aldi is not out of the way if that's where your husband wants to go and he is driving (Wife Rule #1: Don't correct your husband's sense of direction, even if it is wrong, and especially if he knows it). I resigned to a trip to Aldi.

Soon we had steered east, taken a couple right turns, and arrived at The Library Center, which, while located on the same general side of town as Aldi, looks absolutely nothing like it once you get beyond the category of "buildings constructed after the turn of the 20th century." David grinned, "See, I said Aldi was on the way home. Now it is!" Now, empirically speaking, making twice as many stops on a detour doesn't suddenly negate the 'detour' factor of that route. Not empirically speaking, a second stop out of the way doubles the purpose of taking that purposeless route (Wife rule #2: Don't correct your husband's math, even if he thinks that 0 x 2 = 2). I was increasingly glad I had no particularly serious reason to be home soon.

Walking past small knick-knack stores, the Mudhouse coffee shop, and various other things I didn't expect to find inside a library, we approached the "check-out desk" that dwarfed most of the furniture in our house, combined. David smiled at the curly-haired girl behind one of the computers, "We need to get my wife a library card."

Suddenly heaven dawned. Of course, how had it not occurred to me that I had moved within the city limits of a town with a library?! I had lived out of city limits (where library access costs $60/year) for so many years of my life that it hadn't even creeped across the stage of my mind that now, wonderfully, buildings full of books were at my full disposal. 'Giddy' would scarcely describe how I felt, but fortunately there were several aisles of references books available to relieve my quandary. One of them would surely house a thesaurus where dozens of similar words would tell me exactly how to describe my excitement, likely advising me that 'giddy' is really the best descriptor, though 'reeling' is a close second.

"Does it cost anything?" I asked David as we prepared to check-out with the nine books I had selected. I'm pretty sure he laughed at me. Apparently, introducing a bookworm to the library is a bit like taking a shopaholic to the Mall of America for the first time, except cheaper. David seemed rather amused at my inordinate excitement over library access and perhaps confused that I considered city residency the single greatest boon of married life. 

So everyone was right--married life is full of surprises. Great ones, in my opinion. The best part about it, though, is the part that I was aware of from the minute I said "yes" to David's proposal; the most awesome part of married life hasn't been one of those unexpected surprises along the way. It is the privilege of having someone to love who loves you and of getting to spend every day with the most amazing person you can imagine. City residency and library cards are wonderful, but really, the single greatest boon of married life is being with my husband.

Sitting in church today, I almost didn't turn to the Scripture reading for Pastor Rester's sermon--the passage was familiar enough I could repeat it by heart. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." (John 14:1-3)

It is one of the most heart-warming promises, and we love to repeat these passages, these beacons from eternity. The mansions Jesus is preparing for us, the streets of gold and gates of pearl John saw in vision, the lion and lamb napping peacefully together in a country Isaiah depicts in perfect harmony--these glimpses of heaven are all throughout the Bible. Paul (often with sage insight in spite of not being married) assures us that, even with all we have been told of heaven, there are still surprises in store. He assures us that no earthly eye has seen, nor ear heard, all of the unimaginable things that await us in that land of utopian happiness. 

But the very best part of eternity isn't a surprise at all. No shocking, new revelation will give us the ultimate "what makes heaven, heaven." Jesus already told us the climax, the grandest dream come true: "I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." The most beautiful part of heaven and a new world is the privilege of having Someone to love who loves you the most...and getting to spend every day with the most amazing Person you can imagine.

The mansions will be wonderful, the scenery spectacular, residency in the most incredible city ever built...phenomenal. But no privilege--not even a library card--that comes with living in the New Jerusalem will ever, ever equal the pure ecstasy of finally spending eternity with Love.

"...and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you." Isaiah 62:5