Home

I have been thinking a lot about home lately. Several things that have touched my life recently have got me to thinking about home and where I grew up. I recently purchased a CD by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole called Facing Future. If you are not familiar with him, he is an amazing Hawaiian musician and singer. I used his song from this CD "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" for the slide show with Mary in our back yard. Well, it is not his song, but it is his arrangement of it. Another song on this CD is "Country Roads" sung with Hawaiian land marks instead of West Virginia. I remember singing that song in grade school and it still brings a swell in my heart and a tear to my eyes when I hear it. It is talking about country roads taking you home. It is a song that brings thoughts of walking down memory lane to the place that you will never find again in this life, the innocence and carefree feeling of your childhood. Another thing that makes me think about home, is that a month ago I purchased the first 2 seasons on DVD of the Waltons TV show. It has been years since I have watched the Waltons. I remembered all the characters and the music but I had forgotten the stories. It is a great show and you feel good after you watch it. It is a show I know I won't mind Mary watching when she gets a little older. My favorite part is at the end when Earl Hamner (the writer of the show and who the show was about) comes on and gives his follow up on the story and sometimes what happened later to the person who the story was about. He always speaks so fondly and lovingly of his grandparents, parents and family. How they were rich in love and closeness. Times were hard because of the depression and not having much money but they had something that money could not buy. Even though Earl Hamner was grown, married and had family of his own in California, his heart always seemed close to those Blue Ridge Mountains in Virgina and the family home that he grew up in. I think one of the reasons that the show was so popular was a lot of people in America were hungry for stories of having a close knit family and community even though there wasn't a lot of money or material possessions. The show always leaves you with a message that people and doing the right thing are the most important things in our lives. I know when Rich tells of his time of re-commitment to the Lord, he told me that the Lord told him that the kingdom of God was all about people and doing what was right before the Lord. It wasn't about him and what he wanted but it was about serving God and others, even if it was to his own detriment. I am so thankful that we were able to move back to my childhood home and Mary was born in the same town that I was. It is beautiful here and the pace of life is slower and people take time for you more often. There are country roads and beautiful farm lands and forests near by. I pray her soul will be knitted with the same joys that I had as a child and many happy memories will be formed in her mind. That she will be like me, growing up with loving parents and having a family that loved the Lord. But the most profound thing that resulted in my mind in thinking about home, is that someday we who are in the Lord will all be home, when we go to heaven. Then our souls will be at rest and we will wander no more and we won't have to worry about anything, like that feeling we had as a child only better. The Lord will be our father and we will be free from the results of the fall of creation! Won't that be wonderful! What a blessed hope we have in the Lord!