The ones that get away

Tonight I'm feeling a bit melodramatic.  As many of you know, I've chosen a line of work where I'm frequently in harms way, I deal with life and death every day, sometimes in its cruelest forms.  Working as a trauma nurse at a trauma 1 center, I see the worst that there is, working on a fire department as an EMT and recruit, I see even worse things sometimes.  Nothing prepares you for seeing and feeling what you're going to see and feel.

Many years ago a movie came out, it was about a Coast Guard rescue swimmer, a legend.  He had worked many years and had an impressive career.  Late into the movie a recruit asks him a pivotal question.

It gets you to thinking.  In this line of work, we so seldom remember the successes, but for certain we remember the failures.  Of course the character portrayed in this movie is fictional, but thats not the important part.  The important part is the idea.  

This idea is biblical, in 2 Peter 3:9 it says, 

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." NIV

God doesn't want any man to perish, but some have and more will.  While God will remember EVERY one he has lost, He has it right, He also remembers EVERY one that he saves.

Lets take a cue from "the author and perfecter", lets remember the ones we loose, but also remember the ones we save.

Homesick for Heaven

As a child, my parents subjected me to cruel and unusual punishment.  On sabbath we HAD to listen to one of their favorite christian artists, Patricia White.  I don't know why at the time I thought it was cruel and unusual punishment, but I sure did.

As I've grown, and matured, those songs that she sang those many years ago mean more and more to me.  The album, White Robe, is nearly like a concert that ends perfectly.

The final song is one called "Homesick for Heaven."  This is a partial set of the lyrics:

My heart longs for Heaven

My heart longs for home

I'm sick and tired of this old world

I just want to go home

I hear my father calling

I know he feels it too

He's lonesome for his little girl

He wants her home real soon

I'm homesick for Heaven

When the family's all back home

I'm homesick for a lot of things, I'm a transplant into the land that I'm in right now, physically and metaphorically.  Physically I came to this land of my own free will, for an amazing reason, to marry the love of my life.  Metaphorically, I had no choice.  Both physically and metaphorically I long for a place other than where I am.  Physically, at least momentarily, I'm content where I'm at right now, metaphorically however I'll never be content where I'm at right now.  

I'm from the mountains, not the Appalachian mountains of the east...I haven't fully decided they constitute mountains, but from the Rocky Mountains.  I grew up in them and they grew up in me.  The same way that happened, God planed a little seed in me, it was called Eternity.  "He has also set eternity in the human heart" Ecclesiastes 3:11.

I dearly hope for someday sooner than later when one or both of those seeds germinate and come to fruition, but for today I will continue listen to the song that means so much to me now.