October 17, 2019

It seems inevitable that a degree of wanderlust is ever present in this life. It may not manifest itself in the need to travel to exotic places. You may just feel a niggling gnawing for change, even when things are good. Or, alternatively, a clamoring for security and order when things are in flux. As Amanda McMillen said in her August 11thsermon, we are “always a little homesick.”You certainly feel it in the autumnal landscape, riddled with ephemeral beauty.

I suspect this longing is universal; I’m certain it is attested to in Scripture. “For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.” (1 Chronicles 29:15)Throughout both the Old and New Testaments we read that this world, as wonderful as it can be, cannot sustain our deepest yearnings. 

Like Thru-Hikers on the Appalachian Trail, we are passing through. C.S. Lewis once said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  Amen to that – for we were made for a world that shall abide.

“Grant us, O Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that shall abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Proper 20 – BCP p. 182)