One Tuesday evening I received word that my grandmother had become very ill. She had congestive heart failure and kidney failure and was in the hospital in Lewistown, Pennsylvania. My uncle said he wasn't sure if she was going to make it and that things looked serious. The next morning I left to go to Pennsylvania and see how she was doing. There is one thing I really dislike doing, and that's driving long distances by myself. I prefer to drive with somebody to talk to me, to keep me company. When I drive by myself for a long time, however, I do find I get to spend a lot of time thinking. It seems that when I have to drive to Pennsylvania or Florida alone it's because somebody I love has died or is seriously ill and has gone into the hospital . It gives me a chance to think about that person and what they have meant to me. It gives me a chance to reflect on my own mortality and all the things I hope to accomplish in this life.
As I was driving north to Pennsylvania, I went up through Virginia to Interstate 81. About the time I picked up the interstate I noticed there was just a little bit of snow on the ground, just under the shade trees and next to the buildings where the sun hadn't shone. Just a little bit of snow, a little patch here, a little patch there. By the time that I got up to Harrisonburg I noticed snow covering the whole ground. It wasn't very deep, the tips of the grass were still showing through the snow. By the time that I got up to Winchester the trees themselves were covered with freshly fallen powdery snow.
As I entered the Alleghenies the snow was four, six, even eight inches deep in places. Everything was white. I began to feel an ache in my chest. At first I thought, "Well, it's just my concern for my grandmother." But I realized that the deeper into the mountains that I got and the closer to home I got, I realized the ache was something else. It was a yearning, a deep yearning. It was a desire to be home. The closer to home I got, the stronger the yearning got — the deeper the pain got within me.
Every now and then I get that touch of homesickness. When I was in Goldsboro, which is a lot flatter than here in Mebane, I would get homesick for the mountains and I'd go out and drive over the overpass a few times. It gave me that feeling of going up and down. There are some rolling hills here and a lot of times just a drive through the countryside, looking at the old farms makes me feel at home.
There I was getting closer and the yearning was stronger, the feeling of homesickness and desire was strong. Do you ever feel that way? Do you live in a place where you didn't grow up? Do you go back home and have this sense there is something missing in your life? You desire to be here — at home! But I knew I couldn't stay. By Friday it was becoming evident that whatever the doctors were doing for my grandmother was helping and it was time to go home.
Friday, after lunch with my parents and my grandfather, I left to come home to Oxford. Again I began to feel that deepening sense of yearning because of my strong desire to stay in the mountains.
But later, as I was coming down the interstate, I began to have that feeling again. Knowing I hadn't seen my wife and sons in a few days, I knew it was going to be good to be back home in Oxford — back with my family, with my friends.
Such is life. The places we go and travel and visit, places from our past often trigger those memories and touch us with a yearning for something we just can't quite express. I think I feel that way about the text from Isaiah, "that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks." At a time that we look at sending young men and women from our nation into a foreign country, to face the possibility of combat, don't you too yearn and long for that vision Isaiah has where nation will not lift up sword against nation.
During the season of Advent as we read these lessons from the prophet Isaiah and the other prophets about the coming of the kingdom God and the coming of the Messiah. When we look at the promises given to us in the book of the Revelation of Jesus to Saint John where "God will wipe away every tear from every eye." Doesn't that perhaps trigger just a touch of that yearning within you, the desire for the better place knowing that God's kingdom does not yet reign on earth as in heaven. I think when we grow in our faith, and Christian walk, that sense of yearning touches deep within us. As we read the scriptures, as we hear the wit-ness of the prophets, as we see the words given to us — the words we hear every year at this time — can you feel it? That desire? That sense of heading home. A sense that the path that we are taking, the pilgrimage we are on, our Christian walk, is leading us home, the place where we belong. Perhaps not nestled in the Allegheny mountains but a place with God, where the establishment of his reign is for ever. A place where nation will not lift up sword against nation, where they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
I drove to Pennsylvania to see my grandmother. As I saw her lying in the hospital bed, this woman who had cared for me many days, this woman who was 84, who had diabetes, was in failing health, this woman who looked so much older every year I saw her, whose voice was weakening... I realized she was that much closer to the vision given to us by the prophet Isaiah. Even as she neared the end of this walk and even as she came to the day when she sat at the table of the Lord, watching her come to that time deepened that yearning all the more in my life. It deepened the desire to see the establishment of God's kingdom here. This is God's world. Capture that vision and hold it within you until you feel that ache within your soul and you feel that yearning deep within yourself. Know that the vision is the vision of home.
May God's blessings be upon us now and always.