So I'm overnighting in a strange place with people I barely know. And sprinkled among the strangeness are all sorts of wonderful little blessings. I think I just heard a train whistle, and the crickets are chirping among the rolling hills of Western Maryland as a rain touched breeze blows softly through the curtained windows. And I've fallen in love with little Julia, the little girl with Downs' Syndrome, who was so fascinated with the concept of the wedding tomorrow that she turned me into bride tonight--veil and all. To complete the night, we even ate coffee ice cream. I'm away from school, physics homework hasn't been assigned yet, and life seems pretty close to perfect.
Except for one thing. I'm not home.
Now home can be a very broad term these days--and half the time I think of school and the people there as home and family. But if home is a place of settled rest and familiarity and soul-comfort, I'm not there tonight. Something in the back of my mind reminds me that I'm a stranger--that these people with a different accent and different mannerisms and all manner of novelties--are not my home ones.
God taught me a lot this summer about pilgrimage, about not seeing just this world as home but also seeking a heavenly city. And already, in the first few days of being back at PHC, He's reinforced that theme time and again. But I think a lot of times, I miss part of the beauty of this concept.
Most of the time, when I think of the concept of pilgrimage and being a stranger on earth, I approach it with a sort of "be in the world but not of it" kind of attitude. But slowly, I'm starting to reconsider whether this attitude compromises the entirety of pilgrimage.
What about our earthly relationships? As a girl, it can be super easy for me to major in the minors when it comes to relationships. Worries creep in at the slightest thing and often intuition turns into over-analyzation. Or on the happy side, I often derive some of the greatest joy from spending time with other people--talking, laughing, doing things. But God's slowly shaking me out of this idolization of human relationships. Maybe it's not been a conscious one--nor a wrong one at all! God designed us for community with one another, and it is a good thing. But where's the focus?
As I write, I'm reminded of a passage in Weight of Glory where Lewis talks about the souls of others and our responsibility for them. YES. People are dreadfully important. But are we truly viewing them in the light of eternity?
This weekend, my dear pastor of 13 years is getting remarried. His dear wife passed away 3 years ago. Around that time (a few years earlier), Mr. Peeler had begun to preach a series of sermons on keeping an eternal perspective. To this day, I remember the heart turbulence I faced hearing those messages, and how they eventually caused me to realize the gospel's all sufficient efficacy in my own life. And all of this was closely connected with Mrs. Peeler's death.
Tomorrow, there will be a new Mrs. Peeler. And I think it's times like this--pondering the temporary nature of this greatest of all earthly relationships--that I realize anew how much I need a perspective check. It's like John Piper's book, This Momentary Marriage. If even the deepest relationship on earth is but "momentary" in the light of eternity, how ought we to live as fellow pilgrims in light of eternity?
[still thinking, friends. But stay pilgrims. Don't settle for the trivialities of earth when there's a race to run and a battle to be fought. And help me, as we travel, to rightly order and orient myself toward kingdom relationships which will bear their fruit in eternity.]
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