Heaven, our Home
WORDS BY SARA NOLT
IMAGES BY MARYLOU HERSHBERGER,
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BEKAH YODER
My husband and I started dating while I was teaching school in
John took me to my parents’ home. The house I lived in since
nearly a month after they were sent, our communication
I missed seemed to reach out to welcome me: soft, carpeted
a Ghanaian village and he was more than 5,000 miles away in
babyhood was filled with the same wonderful people, love,
America. Aside from the postal service which delivered letters
and happiness I remembered. Things I hadn’t even realized
was limited to e-mail on weekends and to phone calls once
floors, couches long enough to stretch out on, a bookcase
a month when I would get to a city with reliable cell phone
full of old friends, and even the familiar squeak of the front
reception. “Reliable” is relative terminology and only meant
door. Home wrapped itself around me as a year’s separation
my borrowed phone showed enough bars of service to make
melted swiftly away. That separation had been the hardest
a call without climbing a tree to catch the signal, a trick that
thing of all. I missed out on holidays and special events. I
worked in the village. But the city’s cell phone coverage
missed family more than anything else in the world. But now
didn’t mean connections were good. Our conversations were
with my commitment complete, it felt good to be surrounded
plagued with phrases like “Are you still there?” “Can you hear
by those I loved. Clichés aside, there is no place like home.
me?” “Could you repeat that?” “Sorry, I couldn’t catch that”
I look back on that homecoming and know that in it I have
and sometimes dreadful silence told me we lost connection.
tasted a tiny fraction of the joys of heaven. The things that
After five months of sketchy communication, I flew back home
meant the most upon my return are only the dimmest
knowing I would be met by John at the airport. My small army
shadows, the faintest whispers of heavenly things. And since
of pictures of him and the long-distance communication had
these mere whispers bring so much satisfaction, my longing
become poor substitutes for being together in person. John
is deepened for the day when the joys of heaven are no longer
felt the same way.
shadowy whispers but thunders of reality.
“Anticipation is high on seeing you,” he communicated with
One day we are going home. We are only soldiers on tour
me. “If an earthly meeting can bring this much happiness and
of duty, fraught with hardship, separation, and sometimes
excitement, what will it be like when we get to heaven and
sketchy communication. But the day is coming when our
can see Jesus?”
assignment will be over, we can lay down our sword and be
surrounded with all the joys of home.
Being together in person was all we thought it would be.
The pictures of John which I dearly loved in our separation
The END OF SEPARATION is high on my list of things I look
weren’t needed when we sat across a table, talking. I could
forward to in heaven. Being with Jesus in person will be far
watch his eyes twinkle when he laughed. I could hear his
better than being with John, as much as I loved that reunion.
voice clearly now with no miserable phone connection to cut
I can hardly wait. Plus, though heaven isn’t all about family
our sentences short. Better than that, we could communicate
reunions, we will eternally be together with those we are
with no words at all. Exchanging happy looks is a language of
its own and totally possible when we were together.
separated from now.
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