There's No Place Like Home

There is a fine line between being sentimental -- which everyone loves -- and being on an episode of "Hoarders" -- which most people recoil from in disgust. Some would say I walk that line like a tightrope. Sentimental sounds much better than pack rat. In years past I leap frogged across the line, but during twenty-five years of marriage, my organizational virtuoso of a wife has taught me the value of purging possessions periodically. Decluttering has actually improved our marriage. After she read the Marie Kondo book, and watched her television show, I started making it a point to "spark joy" for her everyday because I want to make sure I get to stick around for twenty-five more.

Generally, my most treasured keepsakes are displayed in some way, usually in my office, but most of them are kept in boxes because I don't have the heart to get rid of them yet. Admittedly, over time many of those "must keeps" have diminished during moving times. If you really want to know whether or not a possession "sparks joy" then look at it and ask yourself if you really want to pack it, load it on a U-Haul, move it five hundred miles, unload it and unpack it again. That will help you cull some keepsakes in a hurry. It's also during moving times that some of the long buried treasures make their way to the surface the way erosion can expose things in the earth; things you treasure that have been there the whole time but you just didn't realize it because they were buried under your busy schedule, countless distractions, or literal stuff; things that reemerge at just the right time.

Our recent move provided a great opportunity to separate the keepsakes from the clutter, and while throwing away boxes of clutter stored in the shed behind the house, I stumbled across some treasure. Inside a badly damaged box, I found the legal pad containing my handwritten notes from the first sermon I ever preached. I didn't know that even existed anymore, but I hope one day my grandchildren will be glad it does. This treasure trove of memories also contained church bulletins announcing the births and then the baptisms of my sons, the death of my grandfather and the sermon notes from when I preached his funeral, and tons of other images of important moments from my life. As I began unearthing these artifacts of my past I found myself taking a break from emptying the shed and immersing myself in a bit of emotional archaeology.

Sitting on my desk this morning, a few hundred feet from the Pleasant Valley church building, are two discoveries that I rescued form their cardboard tomb. They are two flyers that I've kept which date back nearly twenty years. One is a flyer from a Winter Youth Series when I was invited to Pleasant Valley to speak to the youth of East Lauderdale County, and the other is from a Gospel Meeting I held here in 2002. I couldn't honestly tell you why I kept these sheets of paper, but for some reason I held on to them and put them in a box with some of my most treasured keepsakes. And now, one week before moving to Frog Pond to become a member of the Pleasant Valley family, I stumbled across them. A more skeptical person would dismiss this as coincidence, and maybe it is, but I believe that coincidences are just times when God chooses to remain anonymous, so I took it as a sign.

Sometimes God’s workings are very public and very visible. Last week I shared with you some of the things He had done since we were forced from our buildings -- neighborhood driveway worship services, drive in worship services covered by the newspaper, family baptisms in the pool -- but today I am reminded of how He is always working slowly and quietly behind the scenes, mostly unnoticed day to day. This virus has radically changed our society, and in a hurry, but God hasn't changed and He is still working in all of this, even when we don’t see Him. He’s done this countless times in the long ago, and fortunately for us, He had His prophets write down the stories of His secret, subtle workings so that we would know that this is precisely the sort of thing He is doing now.

Early in life Joseph, son of Jacob, was a dreamer of dreams that were messages from God. Decades later these dreams, which were a source of contention within his family, would be used by God to deliver his family, and all of Egypt, from certain death during a famine (Genesis 37; 41-42). Joseph was oblivious to God's work behind the scenes while he was sitting in the bottom of a well, and then in a prison dungeon in Egypt (Genesis 39-40), but God was still working in his life and Jospeh continued to be faithful in difficult circumstances. Finally, nearly twenty years later, God's work behind the scenes was now very much right in front of his face (Genesis 42-45). It was then that Joseph said to his brothers, the ones who nearly killed him and instead sold him into slavery and faked his death, "And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.'So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay" (Genesis 45:5-9).

Twenty years ago I had no way of knowing the direction my life would take. At the time I was living in my hometown and on our family farm. Jade and I were raising two little boys, and I was working with my home congregation. We lived about as far away from my parents as we now live from the Pleasant Valley building. Ten years later we would set out on a journey that would take us far, far away from home. That path would take us to the tops of volcanoes, through rain forests, and into the mountains of countries all over Central America. That path would plant us in Central Florida for over five years. We do not regret one moment of those ten years away from home. Those years allowed us to meet people, see sights, and experience things we never could have in Pulaski, and every one of those things were things we needed in our life and lessons preparing us for the future.

All we were trying to do on our journey was remain faithful, but all the while God was preparing us, and then when the time was right, guiding us back to the Tennessee Valley. More specifically, He was bringing us to the Pleasant Valley He first brought us to twenty years ago. Like the children of Israel, we got a taste of this sweet church, but it would take twenty years of wandering before it was time for it to become home. Those interactions we shared through youth days and gospel meetings, and sitting for hours talking in the fellowship hall, long after services had ended, were God's way of planting the seeds of love in our hearts, which you watered by continual support through the years, and in His own time God has given the increase of fruit, resulting in our family being planted here today. The goal now is for our roots to grow strong and deep, and intertwined with everyone else that God has planted in this pleasant valley.

Like a Sunday evening drive home from church in the Summer, sometimes you take the long way home, the scenic route. That's what we've done, and it's been a beautiful ride, but when the sun sets, there's no place like home.