Pastor's Corner

As I think of that young lady clicking her heels together hopefully, wishfully, even wistfully, there was not one thing that she wanted more than to go home. I know how she felt. But don’t we all long for home whenever we are away.

Our culture is replete with images of home and its importance as a place we want to be. Home is a place we actually yearn to be when we’re away. We have a home base, a home plate and home cooking. Alumni have a homecoming. Even ships have a homeport.

However, when a ship is out on the open sea, cutting a course with foam and spray, she is fulfilling her purpose. A ship that never leaves her berth, never transports the goods or services that she was designed for, is no better than a hole in the water. But if that same ship is always abroad and never returns to her homeport, where would the sailors soon long to be?

Those sailors long to be at home. Home is where their hearts are. I have found within me that same longing.

There are times when I think, for a brief moment or two, that I have found where home might be. When I was much younger I thought home was a particular house on a small street in Richland. The next time I thought of a particular place as home, my wife and I lived in Olympia, and at that time I could conceive of only the Tri-Cities as home. As a young Christian, I thought of a particular church as home, excluding a great many fellow believers. None of those were truly home though; they never could be. All they could ever really be to me were locations - comfortable locations - but locations just the same.

Every time I thought I found home, God started working in my life to change and increase my understanding. He showed me that, “Home really is where the heart is.” And the experience of being shown confirmed in me that His word is trustworthy when it says in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is there will your heart be also.”

My heart will follow what I treasure, and because of that I have begun to make this my prayer. Lord, help me to set my heart and my valuables in heaven, that my heart will be centered and focused on the things that you hold dear. But mostly God, help me to not look for a home here on earth, but that I would long to find my way home to you. Along that path and for that purpose guide me to those who you want me to touch and witness to, and help them long for a heavenly home, too.

Dave McCue, Pastor,

United Methodist Church,

Colfax and St. John