Blog 3048 – 03.05.2024
Home
Some years ago now, the first time I heard Michael Buble sing today’s song I knew that I wanted to learn it and sing it. I got the chance to at a family Christmas gathering on Signal Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee where I called home for much of my young life.
Just a few days after my eighteen birthday I boarded a bus for Knoxville, Tennessee to take a physical and be tested before induction into the U.S. Army. From there I was bused to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for eight weeks of Basic Training. They kept us pretty busy but not so busy that I was unable to write two letters a day, one to my girl and one to my mom. I missed my home so much.
What is home? It is that person or place you miss when you are away and where you are missed. I have lived the greater part of my life now in Houston, Texas and have come to think of it more as home. I have only been back to Chattanooga rarely since both my parents died over twenty years ago.
One of those rare visits was the one that I mentioned above when I had occasion to sing Home. When I was a boy I was taught to believe that a land somewhere over the rainbow was my true home. I suppose like many of you I have been searching for that mystical land in every face and every place since I was a lad.
I spent almost the entirety of my last year as a teenager in the Republic of South Vietnam in 1970. I often refer that time as my long hot summer. I was fortunate not to have actually experienced combat. I did however fight the fight all soldiers fight with homesickness. They say you can never go home and I suppose my concept of home was forever changed after that long separation. I think it was then that I began to learn what Jesus meant when he told some church folks arguing if heaven was real or not that the kingdom of heaven (home) is within you.
That reminds me of a phrase I repeat in my daily mantra: “I go within, I mirror you, I admire you, I worship you.” I believe that we are all in the same boat headed home.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Home
theencouragingword 