TURN YOUR HEART TOWARD HOME

Autumn may cause you to “turn your heart toward home.”

Years ago, my wife and I heard Steve and Annie Chapman in concert at The Church of the Nazarene in Greenville, S.C. They sang “Turn Your Heart toward Home.” The chorus of that ballad, as I remember, contains these words: “Turn your heart toward home; turn your heart toward home. You’ve been gone so long; turn your heart toward home.”

That song often plays in my mind when summer leaves begin turning to shades of yellow, orange, crimson and brown.

Autumn signals that the year is drawing to a close. Homegrown tomatoes sliced for sandwiches slathered with Duke’s Mayonnaise have gone the way of summer. We want warm soup and maybe a fire in the fireplace.

Many churches hold autumn homecoming services and invite former members and friends to return and enjoy fellowship. And, as someone said, “Homecoming is not homecoming without dinner on the grounds (even if it is on tables).”

A minister told me that people don’t like to return to churches they once attended and find change. They want to hear the same hymns and see the same people they saw in days gone by.

I suppose we all grow nostalgic, at times.

After President Abraham Lincoln visited the place where he grew up, he wrote “My Childhood’s Home I See Again.” That poem contains these words: “My childhood home I see again, / And sadden with the view; / And still, as memory crowds my brain, / There’s pleasure in it too.”

In one verse, Lincoln called “memory” a “midway world” between earth and paradise, “Where things decayed and loved ones lost / In dreamy shadows rise….”

He wrote of “woods and fields, and scenes of play, and playmates loved so well.”

He recalled leaving his childhood home and the passing of time: “The friends I left that parting day, / How changed, as time has sped! / Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, / And half of them are dead.”

Lincoln concluded his poem with this verse: “I range the fields with pensive tread, / And pace the hollow rooms, / And feel (companion of the dead) / I’m living in the tombs.”

In 1688, Johannes Hofer, then a Swiss medical student, reportedly coined the word “nostalgia,” to describe “a longing for the past, often in idealized form.” The word is made up of two Greek words that mean “returning home” and “pain/longing.” It once referred to a serious medical disorder, but the word nostalgia entered everyday language and is now used to describe a yearning for a lost time and place. The Spanish call nostalgia “el mal de corazón” (heart-pain). We often call it “homesickness.”

When I return to Faith Temple, the interdenominational church I attended while growing up in rural Greenville County, S.C., I enjoy worshiping with present-day members; and sometimes, even as we worship, I envision a joyful groundbreaking ceremony held on Sunday morning, December 30, 1956, when I was nine years old. In a dream-like mental photograph, I see cars parked along Highway 253 (now called “Rev. James H. Thompson Road”) and see Pastor “Jimmy” Thompson ditch a shovelful of dirt as church leaders stand around him. Then I feel “heart pain” as I see the faces of my parents, grandparents and friends who once worshiped at Faith Temple but have passed on.

Turning one’s heart toward home may bring pain, but as President Lincoln said, “There’s pleasure in it too.”

When I think about my childhood church and about places where I’ve lived, and I begin to feel the pain and pleasure inherent in memory, I often recall these words found in an old hymn: “O think of a home over there, / By the side of the river of light, / Where the saints all immortal and fair, / Are robed in their garments of white. / Over there, over there, O think of the home over there.”

The 'Powers that Be' and 'Are'

“Be patient with the ‘powers that be.’ They are not the ‘powers that are.’” Chad, our daughter Suzanne’s husband, sent me that quote by e-mail.

My wife Carol and I recently visited them at their home, about an hour’s drive from our residence in Southern Pines, North Carolina. During our visit, I mentioned what I perceived to be an insensitive remark made to me by one of my overseers at the carpet manufacturing company where I work.

“That’s the kind of thing I have to put up with,” I told Chad, who teaches math to public school sixth-graders. Suzanne instructs third-graders.

After receiving Chad’s e-mail, I felt bad that perhaps I had conveyed to him that I didn’t seem to believe that God’s “powers that are” are greater than this world’s “powers that be.”

That term “powers that be” is dictionary-defined as “the established government of authority” or “any group that holds power over a certain entity.”

Often used as a reference to supervisors, “higher-ups” and “those in charge,” the term “powers that be” comes from Romans 13:1, as translated in the “King James Version” of the Bible: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”

Because of our fallen natures, we tend to rebel against “the powers that be.”

Years ago I sat behind a thin, old designer named Charlie Younkers in the Bigelow Carpet design studio. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Charlie, who never married, turned toward me one morning as I worked on a design and said, “I don’t like George (our supervisor).”

“Why not?” I asked.

“He’s the boss,” Charlie said.

That said a lot about human nature. Like ungrateful Israelites wandering in the wilderness after being delivered from slavery, we tend to complain about “the powers that be,” no matter who they are. We may wonder how they could be “ordained of God.” Even if we believe they are God-ordained, we may murmur about them anyway, just because we feel like grumbling!

Is God in control of all things? Let’s look at these verses:

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of those whose hearts are perfect toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9).

“The earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalms 24:1).

“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God” (Psalm 90:2).

“And Jesus…spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:18-19).

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Hebrews 1:1-2).

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

God is ultimately in control, though we may not like present circumstances or the “powers that be.”

While serving almost two years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era, I saw this quotation scrawled on a wall: “We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the impossible for the unthankful.”

(Get that thought into your spirit, and your morale will be lower than a snake’s belly.)

I’m learning that Christian faith has a lot to do with practicing patience when I’m inconvenienced or think “the powers that be” are undeserving of respect. If Romans 13:1 (“the powers that be are ordained of God”) is true, then I can “Be patient with the powers that be. They are not the powers that are.” God is in control.

When Life's Winds Blow

The sound of a large tree crashing in the woods behind our Southern Pines home woke me before daybreak on a recent Saturday.

Hurricane Hanna assailed the North Carolina coast, brought over six inches of rain to parts of Moore County, and left a scar in our neck of the woods.

After that falling tree interrupted my sleep, I glanced at our clock and saw “5:46 a.m.” in digital, glow-in-the-dark numbers. I heard rain descending in torrents and figured a diseased or dead tree had become waterlogged and fallen prey to the amount of wind needed to bring it down. Then I wondered if maybe that tree had been healthy, but, due to a weak root system and wet ground, its water-weary top-parts “gave up the ghost” and plummeted to the forest floor.

I often see “the human predicament” reflected in nature, and in the few minutes between hearing that tree fall and drifting back to sleep, I envisioned that tree as a person, a person overwhelmed by life’s storms.

I suppose most of us at times experience discouragements that can cause us to feel as though we want to give up, quit resisting life’s wayward winds and fall over in defeat.

When difficulties come, I try to reaffirm my belief that God has my life in his hands and that my successes and failures are his to use to mold me into a person of positive purpose.

When trials arrive, I sometimes recall these words from “Stand by Me,” a hymn written in 1905 by Charles A. Tindley, an African-American:

“When the storms of life are raging, stand by me…When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea, Thou Who rulest wind and water, stand by me.”

That song’s second verse can comfort those who feel isolated:

“In the midst of faults and failures, stand by me…When I do the best I can, and my friends misunderstand, Thou Who knowest all about me, stand by me.”

The third verse addresses opposition:

“In the midst of persecution, stand by me…When my foes in battle array, undertake to stop my way, Thou Who saved Paul and Silas, stand by me.”

The final verse of Tindley’s hymn serves as a prayer for a person negotiating old age:

“When I’m growing old and feeble, stand by me…When my life becomes a burden, and I’m nearing chilly Jordan, O Thou ‘Lilly of the Valley,’ stand by me.”

As a teenager, I sometimes heard the Rev. R.B. Hayes sing “No, Never Alone” at Faith Temple Church in Taylors, S.C. Hayes, elderly and thin when I heard him sing, could touch hearts when he intoned that hymn, which was written in 1897 by Ludie D. Picket. The song contains these words:

“I’ve seen the lightning flashing, and heard the thunder roll. I’ve felt sin’s breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul; I’ve heard the voice of my Savior, telling me still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

As Hayes sang that song, I’d hear a few “amens” and see some folk raise hands as he launched into the high notes that conveyed these words in that hymn’s chorus:

“No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

Another verse contains these words:

“The world’s fierce winds are blowing, temptation’s sharp and keen. I have a peace in knowing my Savior stands between – He stands to shield me from danger, when earthly friends are gone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.”

As the world’s winds blow, I often draw comfort from these words: “…for he (Jesus) hath said, ‘I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee’” (Hebrews 13:5).