Today is my first day “back to work” after a month’s leave, which saw me return home to England. Today has been a busy but typical Monday. I’ve reviewed this coming Sunday’s sermon which I’d written some weeks ago, selected the hymns and liturgy for Sunday, prepared next week’s service for a residential home, thought about the upcoming service for Pentecost, and I’ve checked a month’s worth of emails and correspondence. The weekend was similarly filled with its usual routine of groceries, housework, laundry, ironing, and gardening – though a lot more ironing and gardening than I’d usually need to do.
On one level, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been away – how quickly I seem to have stepped back into routines and schedules.
And yet, on another level, it feels like I’ve been away forever – and that my head and my heart are still away in that other place, and here I am waiting for them to catch up.
Maybe it’s just jetlag. Maybe I’m homesick. Maybe it’s post-holiday blues. Or maybe, it’s all of the above. So much happened during my time away, that it will take time to let it sink in and to settle fully back into everyday life.
I’ve spent the last fortnight in the company of family and my oldest friends, and reconnecting with my favourite places in the English countryside. It has been such a wonderful time of refreshing and joy and belonging – that it begs the question why I waited eight years to make the trip. Though of course, a lot has happened for better or worse during the last eight years, not least my ordination to ministry, and Covid restrictions.
My trip home has set me to thinking about belonging.
Peter talks about us belonging to God, in the context of being chosen and set apart. Paul also writes in several letters about belonging to God. In a beautiful letter, he describes us as children and heirs, echoing a theme we find early in John’s Gospel of being given the right to become children of God. I know that I belong first and foremost to God. In some past moments of rejection and loneliness, it was all I really knew for certain; “I am His and He is mine” – as the old hymn puts it.
Paul says plenty about us belonging to one another too. How we are one in Christ with different contributions to make for the benefit of each other. I know that out of my belonging to God and my obedience to His call into ministry, I also now belong in loving service to the folks of Clayton Wesley. Just like I have belonged in different seasons to other communities where I was called to serve.
My trip home has also highlighted how, in a different way, and yet equally as heart-tugging, I belong to my family and friends both here and overseas in equal measure. Time and distance have not lessened that sense of belonging to the folks back home.
So, in this post-holiday return to routine and commitments, the question forming for me is: how do I navigate a sense of attachment to two different worlds, and to life in two places?
Paul says these helpful words: “Others think only about this life here on earth, but we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.” If I read Paul correctly, real attachment, then, is first and foremost to God and His purposes. That’s where true belonging and purpose in life begins. That’s where it ends too. Like we read, “there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God.”
The task is to seek first the things of God, His kingdom, His reign – and all the rest – geography, distance, a sense of home – will fall into place.
Tolkein in his letters writes, “We all long for Eden… our whole nature… is soaked with the sense of exile.” O’Tuama says in his unique poetic voice, “I’ve heard that Elves have ships on which to sail away, across the morning waters to their grey havens fair and far away from here. I wonder if all my longings could shape for me a ship of hopes to carry me on the seas of homeward yearning. I yearn for home.”
It helps to know that I’m not alone in that feeling of exile or yearning. Better men than me have penned what I’m feeling today. I simply need to remember that my first attachment and my belonging – my true home for want of a better term – is with God and His purposes. That’s where yearning is satisfied. That’s where peaceful rest is found.
I’ve just spent time in some of my old “thin places” in Wiltshire and Somerset in England. Ancient and green places full of history and meaning to generations of people who have gone before. Over the years, walking these places has helped me to step out of the worries of life, to see things more clearly, to feel closer to God. These places have helped me over the decades to celebrate nature and to feel a sense of connection.
My favourite “thin place” here in South Australia is Manning Flora Reserve, about 5 miles from my house. Here, heaven and earth seem to touch. I can imagine Christ walking around like that Eden image in Genesis of God walking at the cool of the day. Here, prayer is more like easy conversation between old friends. Rare and precious native orchids grow here – giving testimony to the wonder of creation, and to beauty. They also remind me that rare and precious life is found here too, in service to God.
I think I may head out to Manning Reserve for an hour this afternoon. For sure, I can do no better than to hold on to God right now, seek His face, seek to hear His voice, and remain obedient to His call. I’ll hand the jetlag, the homesickness and the post-holiday blues over to Him.
Wade Robinson’s hymn says it all:
“O this full and precious peace from His presence all divine; in a love that cannot cease, I am His and He is mine. Heaven above is deeper blue, earth around is sweeter green, that which glows in every hue Christless eyes have never seen. Birds in song His glories show, flowers with richer beauties shine since I know, as now I know, I am His and He is mine.”
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Scripture refs taken from: 1 Pet 2:9, Gal 3:26-29, Jn 1:12, Ro 12:5, 1 Cor 12, Phil 3:19-20, Heb 4:9, Mt 6:33, Mt 11:28, Ps 23:1-3, Gen 3:8a.
The poem “Yearn” comes from Padraig O’Tuama’s “In the Shelter.”
The hymn “Loved with everlasting love” is by Wade Robinson.