When I think “home,” I think of the house that I grew up in. We moved in 1967, but to me it’s still home. In fact, that’s it, in the picture.
But you can’t go back: not in a fallen world, you can’t. Would you believe the taxes on it are almost $9,000 a year? That’s what we call Blue State taxes. And I won’t even tell you what it sells for. You wouldn’t believe me.
And anyhow, although the house still stands, my mother’s multifloribunda rose hedge is gone, the playground is gone, the woods is gone, and all the nice people and dogs and cats that I grew up with, they’re gone, too. Even if I could get back to my old bedroom, when I looked out the window, any window, everything would be different.
Nine thousand bucks in taxes. Every year.
No, you can’t go back. But we can and do go on. “In my father’s house are many mansions,” Jesus tells us. One of them is already set aside for you. I want to look out through that bedroom window! Is that my Grandpa coming up the walk? Is that my uncle’s car coming down the street?
I do believe it is.
Some fifteen years ago I took a trip back to my old neighborhood and spent the night in a motel within a half mile of my boyhood home. That night there was a horizontal snow storm and I laid in bed watching the snow streak past a house I had seen virtually every day of my childhood. It was a very comforting moment for me and I hope to duplicate the experience again soon.
The prices of homes and taxes levied are beyond imagination. I am currently held prisoner by home prices. I bought a house well before the real estate collapse and prices have never recovered. The place where I want to live is priced beyond any reasonable reach and certainly not a mortgage I would want to take on this late in my working life.
It’s all an illusion. These prices cannot hold forever and if there’s a washout of the market some of these homes could drop precipitously in value.
But you are right on the mark. Our Creator will take matters into His hands and provide something much, much better.
I so love this…..what a picture you paint of heaven.
I’m just wondering why today you are thinking of your mansion in heaven and of seeing Grandpa and uncle again… But of course, it’s none of my business.
Actually, I think about those things all the time.
Beats thinking about the state of the world. We need God’s rescue.
If it weren’t for the Lord’s plans, and for the knowledge that HE CAN make them happen, it would be very depressing. By the way, your house pic closely resembles that of one of my aunt’s and uncle’s. I loved going there
as a kid.
It’s an add coincidence that you reposted this when you did. Of late, I’ve found myself frequently thinking about the place where I spent my adolescent years. It is truly “home” to me.
I have reminded myself that the people I knew there have aged since I left, over 40 years ago, and that many have passed away. If I were somehow able to go back to that location, I would be going back to a much changed place, filled with strangers, much more crowded and much more expensive. My parents wouldn’t be there, nor the neighbors I knew or other friends whom lived nearby. To paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, you can’t go home again.
Nonetheless, I freely confess to being homesick for the places and people I knew in the ‘70s and think of these as the best years of my life, although they were far from perfect.
The fact is, we all long for something better, and the only source of that is the Restitution of all Things in the Kingdom of God. Only then will any of us know our true home.
I fully expect to find my grandpa’s house, with intact grape arbor full of grapes, in heaven.
For me, home will always be the Front Range of Colorado. I never felt that the place I was born was anywhere I wanted to stay, but when my parents moved to Colorado I knew I was home.
It’s grossly overpriced now and way out of my reach, financially. It’s also quite crowded and all the back-road shortcuts I spent decades devising no longer work, because every square pico-meter of the place is overcrowded with vehicles and stoned-out riff-raff that live there because of the legal status of recreational marijuana. It makes me sick at heart to think of it.
But the place, the setting, the spot on the map (so to speak) is more to my liking than any other place on earth. Cottonwood trees and the thin, clear air at 5,280’ of elevation do my heart a great deal of good. Having spent my teen years there, the proportions of the left and right ventricles of my heart are different and I am permanently acclimated to high elevations. I don’t even notice anything until I am above 9,000’. (This also turbocharges me at lower elevations and, in some ways, I find lower elevations more fatiguing than higher elevations.)
I have a spot picked out on the high plains and would love to live there someday. I visited a while back and realized that I was in the perfect place for my tastes. I hope that our Creator allows me to end up there.
The Lord has blessed us with a real nice 1800 sq foot home built in 1978. Our property tax here in Arkansas is $850. There are homes like mine all over town (one across the street) for as low as $120,000. Fort Smith (my city) was ranked the least expensive city of 80,000 population to live in. I strongly urge blue state people to move to our red state. We have so many Christian radio stations in our town I don’t have enough buttons on my car radio to set them on.
That’s tempting… if I could find someone to undertake the herculean labor of moving all our stuff. And if I didn’t mind never seeing again anyone I know.
It may be time to make new friends. Nothing expands our horizons as new relationships – especially those based on serving the Lord in sincerity and truth.
I was thinking of the few family members I have left.