If I Forget Thee

The landscape down here in the south is so exotic. I think this every time we drive rapidly by, not taking time to see Tennessee, ever, or Alabama or Louisiana or anything, always rushing desperately to Texas as fast as we can. The great tall vine covered trees, the seemingly low lying hills, the rich variations of green and light, I always wish we could stop and look at it all a lot longer.

On the other hand, Texas. Oh my word, I love the heat so much, and the dry barren rocky land of the very south. I spent the whole drive yesterday, the many hours of Alouicious and Gladys building mile upon mile of malice and accusation, trying to think of Binghmaton in various other lights and frames. Of course, in a very essential way, the place doesn't matter. One place is as another. God calls all people in all places to attend to him, even in the northeast. There has to be church in the rolling, stayed, and to me by now, familiar hills of New York and Pennsylvania. To many people those hills are a well beloved, nostalgia laden promised land. Although less and less so as the need to money and a future draws so many away.

Is it really important, I asked myself, the place where you live? Does where you live really matter? Is the place itself of consequence? Whenever I read about the land of Israel through the pages of the bible, the lovely familiar names, I always answer yes to myself about this question. The place matters so much. So so so much. In some way, it's the most important thing in the world. The land, and God, and the people, all tied up tightly together. How extraordinary that the first Christians ran away from Jersualem without a second thought, running out to the ends of the world, not sitting by the stream with their harps and weeping for longing and sorrow, but going everywhere, taking the message to everyone. The way so many missionaries from the west, from America, packed up and moved without reams of paper and sorrow and hesitation. The foolish, hopeful way Matt and I moved to Good Shepherd without thinking about it too too much. Well, we did think about it. And prayed and everything. But the place didn't matter. We just wanted to serve God. The folly of youth, maybe.

It seems to me, observing as I try to do, the currents and shifts of this American culture, that the place where you live matters more and more. When you ask a person, if he, or she (I'm not totally sexist, sometimes I talk to women, real or constructed) could have or do anything in the world, without limits, very often the first thing named will be the kind of place the person wants to live. The west coast. A big city. Near the beach. Warm. Cool. No bugs. It takes more questioning to dig up the kind of work or family relationships or friendships. Church pretty well is never mentioned, or it comes dead last. I don't have anything to say about this trend that I've noticed. Well, trend it too fancy a word. It's not even that. And maybe it's just that I'm mostly asking people who are in a place they often don't want to be. If I asked this question of a city of happy people maybe none would remark on the place.

I used always to be asked “Where are you from?” And I never had a decent answer to that question. I'm from lots of places. And I probably can't ever go back to any of them, even though a lot of the time I really want to. Nobody ever asked “Where do you want to live?” How can a person even know? “What do you want to do,” is the sensible question. If you have something to do, something to say, God will carry you along to a place to do and say it. That's what the church is for, that's what the church does. It has to be everywhere, in every place, speaking to everyone. So I feel a tiny guilty folly for asking myself, as the road disappears behind us, could I live here? Or there? If I could live anywhere, where would I live? Why would I ask myself this? The place doesn't matter. Especially because when I search around for an answer, the answer is always Jerusalem. I would live in Jerusalem, if I could live anywhere, without any limitations. And so I need not be sad, because I will get to live there, some day and then after that, for every day.