Just Passin' Thru...

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. 

Pursue the things over which Christ presides. 

Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. 

Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. 

See things from his perspective.

-Colossians 3:1-2 (the Message)

 

This past week we took a momentous road trip. Momentous in the sense that we covered a lot of ground in a few short days.

6 days. 6 states. 4 Great Lakes. 

Our first stop was Ohio to visit my parents & to pick up Chuck's new motorcycle that he purchased from my dad. We continued on to Michigan to celebrate the marriage of some of our dearest friends. & then on back towards our home in Minnesota. Instead of taking the busy city way thru Chicago, we opted to skirt along Lake Michigan thru the Upper Penininsula.  As we drove over the Mackinaw bridge & I began to tell my daughter about how her Auntie Nini & I had walked the bridge one summer, something surprising happened. My eyes filled with tears & my heart longed to stay.

You see, I grew up here... just a few miles by water from the bridge in Cedarville. A little town nestled on the shores of Lake Huron surrounded by islands called the Les Cheneaux. 

Somewhere along the way my little family has developed a deep emotional connection to the Les Cheneaux Islands.  There is something magical about this place. When we lived here we loved nothing better than to drag our kayaks to the rocky beach in front of our house, climb in & push off.  We were so blessed to spend many glorious days basking in the sun, a cool breeze at our backs, paddling along the jagged shoreline of the Les Cheneaux.  As much as we loved its familiarity, each time we ventured out, we were amazed yet again by the wild beauty of this place.  We marveled as we paddled through the deep cold water, over the rough rocks, some as big as houses, & gazed into the dense green forest.  It was like experiencing a miracle, a little bit of heaven, every time.

As adults we now realize why people that grow up here, come back.  When we were teens, we couldn’t wait to get out.  We were going to shake off the dust from that little ole’ town & start our lives in the “real” world.  And yet, we kept gravitating back here.  Oh, we managed to stay away for about a year & then we just couldn’t help ourselves.  At first, we came back to visit our families on holidays but after they moved on to other places, we continued to come.  We came as 'fudgies' and rented a cabin at Spring Lodge for a week during the summer that gradually stretched into two.  When God brought us back here to live & serve in our home church in 2001, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for us to do. 

I have to admit that it was with heavy hearts that we left a thriving ministry to follow God back out into the world six years later.  If we had had it our way, we would have stayed here in the wilds of Michigan forever.  We had every intention of staying put; watching our children grow up, seeing them graduate from Cedarville schools, working & maturing in the ministry of the church we had grown up in & finally, growing old in a little cottage on the lake.  But we know that God’s plan for us isn’t always what we think it will be. So, as difficult as it was for us to leave the comfort of our home & ministry to face this new unknown, we knew we must be faithful.  We must be willing to follow Him even to the ends of the earth… even to Minnesota.

God was faithful & it was an amazing move for us. I have to admit though, that I sometimes find myself desperately homesick. & while a short two hour drive to Duluth boasts many of the wonderful things we love about the U.P. it just isn't quite the same. 

Today as I mulled this all over in the confines of my library cubicle, it struck me that how I feel about the U.P. is often how believers feel about heaven. C.S. Lewis once said, ""We don't have a soul. We are a soul. We happen to have a body." Somewhere deep down inside our souls we know that this world is not our home... our real home is in heaven. 

It's a tricky balance really... our souls longing for heaven & our bodies living here on earth. Just as I need to remain focused on the life & ministry God has set before me & my family here in Minnesota, we as believers need to be careful that our longing to be there in heaven doesn't make us ineffective here in the world around us. We need to be present... allowing the presence of the Holy Spirit living in us to spill out onto everything we touch.  

"Have your heart right with Christ, and He will visit you often, and so turn weekdays into   Sundays, meals into sacraments, homes into temples, and earth into heaven." 

                                                               -Charles H. Spurgeon