Called Home

After close to 16 months away from the University of South Carolina, the time has come. I am back. Classes began Thursday, and things are in full swing on campus. It is the same place I left one short year ago but somehow it looks quite different now. I notice phrases I never recognized before and listen to professors from a different place in those same plastic chairs. While it is strange to have culture shock in my native land, it is an occurrence that I am coming to appreciate. It is one further step in growing up.

While it is wonderful to be with my friends and family again, the quirks of America are surely difficult to grasp and wrestle through. In ways, I feel as if I were a stranger in my homeland. Then, I remember, I am; I should feel this way. As a follower and lover of Jesus Christ, I am a stranger in this world. This is not my home and how thankful I am that home is still to come. Things should be strange and things should make me look twice and question what seems commonplace.

James (Christ’s brother) addresses his letter to all Christians, which is preserved for us in the New Testament, as “to the twelve tribes scattered among the nations.” Of the dozens of ways he could have chosen to address the followers of Jesus, he chose to refer to them by their Jewish roots (an interesting coincidence in our chronically anti-Semitic world). Also, he chooses to point out the fact that the believers are dispersed throughout the nations. They are not doing life in places they regard as their homes. His reminder acknowledges that they are very likely grappling with not understanding local customs and consistently feel ever so slightly out of sync. He follows such an address with a command: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials of many kinds.” Having just told them that they did not fit in and should expect to struggle, he then tells them that their happiness had better come from only one place. His name is Jesus, and he allows us to call him Savior. Anywhere else we could seek joy will shake and will change. It is Him or it is impossible.

James’s words recall the fact that we are not yet home, and yet we must walk through this strange place with great fullness. Such a command makes no sense though unless we have heard something first: a calling home. Christ came and invited you and me back to the only native land we have, a place we will never feel we don’t belong because it is where we were made to be forever and ever…with Him.

So here I am, back in the land of sweet tea and Magnolia blossoms. And as lovely and growing as the Czech Republic was in my life, I have peace knowing it is finished. There is no place I would rather be than the one I am in today: called back home. For now, to Carolina; forever, to the arms of the One who loved me first.