The good ol’ summertime leads many of us down the primrose paths of vacations and travels to a variety of places all over the world. Or it might just be a short spin down memory lane to visit kith and kin. Suitcases, which were dormant during the winter, are filled to the brim with clothing and sundry other articles necessary for survival on the road. Cameras are loaded with fresh batteries, wallets with cash, cars washed, and houses tided in preparation for the long-awaited journeys. Time to leave what seems to be the ho-hum ordinariness of everyday life around the house and discover what’s just beyond the blue horizon.
On the road and in the air, we’re off to see whatever wizards of wonder we can discover at the beach or in the mountains or to the hinterlands of other continents. Some are even bold enough to travel to New Jersey to visit relatives! After a day or so of strange beds and showers, we experience this unconscious tug, this longing for the day when we will be back home. Such an experience does not negate the positive and new experiences we are enjoying. Not yet! But let the days pass and this strange illness develops within us. You don’t need a physician to tell you that this is a case of homesickness.
Imagine what it must have been like for our pilgrim mothers and their husbands to have left their homeland or “mother” country to cast their lot in the new world. While the adventure must have had some invigorating aspects, there must have been this lurking desire to return to the familiar landscape of the old home place.
The children of Israel must have felt it out there in the forty-year wilderness, never mind the vision of the land filled with milk and honey. Homesick vagabonds following Moses to God knows where, almost willing to throw in the towel and go back to the known of Egypt’s slavery.
But out there in the middle of nowhere, they learned this little trick that would stay with them for the rest of the Bible. They finally figured out that the only real home was the presence of God that seemed to be with them. In their writings they called God their “dwelling place”. And somehow that realization created all the comforts of home for them wherever they might be on the road or however messy the tent became.
Perhaps another way of being at home in this world is to see the good Earth itself as the only home we have. While we may differ in so many aspects like continents or race or religion or nationality or income disparity, unless we find a way to live together in peace and harmony, we are all bound to live as aliens from some other planet. If we don’t take care of each and ALL of us and this planet we inhabit, we are doomed to be among the homeless vagabonds wandering around forever.