Home Bound

{March 23, 2011}

We were all too happy to be heading home; the trip was about 2 days too long.  We could have easily gone home 2 days ago having already accomplished all of our goals and definitely ready to be home with the kids, but we couldn’t have anticipated how quickly we would have done so to have booked earlier flights accordingly.

Landing in Frankfurt at 5:00 AM was like waking up in a dream.  The airport lights sparkled and the air smelled clean. Advertisements displayed expensive watches, fancily dressed couples kissing outside a French café, an expansive waterfront hotel with a yacht parked outside.  Signs were clear, even if in German, but there were signs!  All was glittzy and clean, orderly, purposeful.  There was soap in the public bathroom.  Soap!  Yes!

We wondered if they had a Starbuck’s.  They did.  Yes!  We were back in the West.  Back in the 1^st World.  I wondered what Bizzy would think and all the friends we had made in Africa whom we have exchanged email addresses and Facebook friend requests with.  Yes, Facebook is big in Ethiopia!  They all seem to want to come to America.  When asked, that is their country of choice to travel to.  But I think they truly have no idea how different their world is from ours.  It is vastly different.  And for the most part, they don’t know it.

On one of our walks in Bahir Dar, passing beggars and infirmed, homeless, toothless, broken people, Eric and I were reflecting on this and our adoption of Kate - and how God has adopted us.  For those He has chosen from the beginning of time, He plucked us out of darkness and into His glorious light.  We didn’t know the squalor of sin and filth we lived in.  We couldn’t even see it.  It was normal.  It was just how things were, how you did things, how you thought, how you behaved.  It’s what everyone around you did.  Until we were brought into the light, we didn’t know it was there.  We couldn’t see it; it was unreachable, unattainable except for a Sponsor, a Benefactor, an Advocate, the Savior to come to us…and get us out of there.  And compared to heaven, the 1^st World is nothing! 

What a forever homecoming we have to look forward to, after this short 80-year life, for those of us who believe.  For now, I will enjoy being in this temporary Texas-based home, and be thankful for where God has placed us in time and space.  He has put us in a position to help, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.  And with God’s help, we will.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.