photo: steve sparks

It’s Five Minute Friday…already!  And just think, in a week, it will be Thanksgiving.  This year has flown, hasn’t it?  The rules for FMF are here.  Come join us!

Earlier this month, our oldest daughter and her family got on an airplane in Kiev, Ukraine and flew to Texas.  They spent the night in Amsterdam so they would get some sleep causing the trip to take 2 full days…I think.  I get rather confused with all the time changes.

Back in the U.S.

Now they are back in the U.S…their home.  Or is it?  The home they once lived in was sold a few years ago and while completing their support raising, they rented an apartment.  Their son was almost 2 when he went to Ukraine and their daughter was born since they lived there so to them, this isn’t really home.

Over the next couple of months they will be traveling, staying in a lot of temporary places.  Early in January, they will move to St. Louis, MO where Dawn’s husband Steve will begin the residential part of his seminary training.  He has done some of it already by internet.  

That will be the first place they will be settled again since living in Ukraine.  All their things that were packed away will catch up with them there.  Their new “home” will be on campus in an apartment.

Living as strangers in our own culture

Their lives right now remind me of what all of us are to be living out…that awareness of being a stranger or alien in your own country.  That period of time when you don’t feel really American and don’t really feel Ukrainian.  You are caught in that middle ground…the land in between.   You speak in English but often the Russian phrase seems more appropos.

As believers, our walk of faith is similar.  GOD is changing us to become more like Him in our characteristics, our motivations, our language and customs.  To us, the change is barely perceptible.  But it often makes us like aliens in a culture that seems less and less Christian.  I’m not sure it ever really was.

We are pilgrims and aliens…but heaven is our home.  It is our home country.  That’s where our heart language is spoken.  That is where we find closeness and the comfort of old freinds…the kind who love us as we are, not as the perfect people who don’t exist.

I know our word today is “fly.”  That’s where I started.  This is where I ended up…a long way from flying!

PS. I forgot to turn on the timer!