Having lived in California for several decades, I don’t get homesick for Maryland much anymore. But occasionally, every once in awhile, when I get caught up in that “let’s go home” emotion, I think of long-ago days when I used to play in the woods beyond our backyard back home in Maryland. As soon as I got home from school, and while Mom was fixing dinner, I would put my things in my room and race out the back door to play with my sister, Kathy, and the neighborhood kids. We’d run into the woods, we’d call to each other, and our shouts would echo through the tall oak trees. Everything echoed—the chatter of birds, the distant clatter of a lawnmower, the slamming of screen doors back up on the street. I barely noticed how long we’d been playing until the rays of the sinking sun would cut long shadows through the trees. And that’s when Kathy and I knew that soon mom would call us home.
Funny, I rarely took it upon myself to go home unless called. Something in me wanted to wait and hear that call… the sound of Daddy’s or Mom’s voice through cupped hands, shouting my name. No sooner did I hope they’d call when I would hear the familiar ring of the dinner bell and “Supper’s ready… time to come home!”
It’s odd how I can still hear my mother’s voice. It almost makes me cry; it just about made me cry when I was a child. The echo of the bell… the haunting sound through the woods… the joy about to break open my heart for the love of my house and my room and the warmth of family… not to mention a great dinner, then maybe a fire in the living room later that evening. Often in the summertime after mom would clear the table and dessert was over, we’d all go out and sit in the backyard and watch the sun go down.
“There it goes… it’s almost gone… look, look, just a little tip of light left. Do you see it?” Our family would vie for who’d be the last one to see the sun set. And then we’d wait for the stars to come out, counting the constellations. It was all I could hope for as a kid. And here I am, an adult, still looking beyond the constellations, singing heaven’s melodies. And soon the dark will give way to dawn…
And in that dawn, I will catch my first glimpse of my real home, the place that, as a Christian, I’ve been homesick for all these years, the place I’ve dreamed of a thousand times since I gazed into a summer sky as a little girl. That heaven will be new, but I don’t think it’s going to be strange to me. Heaven will be the back roads of Maryland. Heaven will be the early morning shimmer on the Chesapeake Bay. Heaven will be the crash of surf on a California beach, and the patches of impossible blue between the pine trees in the Sierras. It’ll be everything dear and familiar scrubbed clean, rain-washed with joy, and multiplied a million times over.
But more than any celestial landscape, I long for something even more. My Savior’s voice, as He stands on the back porch of heaven, cupping his hands and calling me home to supper. And when I first catch sight of Him, arms open to welcome me… I tell you what – you just watch me run!
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 93176
© Joni and Friends