These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
—Heb. 11:13
4364 On His Way Home
A fugitive is one who is running from home,
A vagabond is one who has no home;
A stranger is one away from home,
And a PILGRIM is on his way home.
4365 Not Yet Home
I heard Dr. Morrison tell at Winona Lake about his trip around the world, preaching and teaching the gospel truth. He went on this trip at the same time that Roosevelt went to Africa. Morrison preached the gospel at every port. “Teddy” went to Africa to do some exploring and shoot a few water hogs. When he came back, he was accorded a reception such as few living men had. The governor and the mayor greeted him, the bands played, and countless thousands thronged the wharf to welcome him.
Morrison came home. The governor of the state did not come to meet him, nor did the mayor or the police force. The fire department never noticed him. No flags were waving, no whistles blowing. He did not even have a relative waiting for him. In New York Roosevelt boarded a train and had the same sort of reception all over again when he reached his home city. He was lauded and honored all the way.
Morrison also boarded a train and went home. He did not have a reception at all. Nobody met him. The only person who recognized him was the old baggage master, and he just said, “Hello, there!” in a casual sort of way.
Morrison said: “I picked up my heavy gripes and started off, all alone. I could not help contrasting the homecoming of Roosevelt with my own. God had privileged me to lead ten thousand souls to Christ on that trip—and yet there I was, without a soul to meet me! Nobody cared. Suddenly I stopped. A new, glorious truth had gripped me. And I found myself saying aloud, slowly, exultantly, “Maybe I’m not home yet! Maybe I’m not home!””
—Words in Season
4366 When Things Fail The McQuilkins
Dr. McQuilkin, founder of Columbia Bible College, and his wife were booked to sail to Africa on the City of Lahore. A few days before the ship sailed, Dr. McQuilkin was crossing the city on a streetcar. He glanced casually at the newspaper of a seatmate. Suddenly the headlines came alive: “City of Lahore sinks in harbour.” It could not be true!—but there it was. The boat had caught fire and in an effort to keep the fire from spreading to the pier and other vessels, it had been sunk.
As far as they knew their earthly possessions were gone, along with their carefully-laid plans. But Mrs. McQuilkin said that when her husband called her with the news, there came to her a sense of sudden joy as she realized the utter worthlessness of things. Things did not matter when they had the same faithful, unchanging Lord.
As it turned out, their things, instead of being lost, were still on the dock, but they learned of this later.
—Prairie Overcomer
4367 Homesick For Heaven
Homesick sometimes,
Want to go home;
Aching with longing
Where’er I roam.
Weary sometimes,
Wishing to be
There in the glory
Eternally.
Coming sometime,
Great trumpet sound!
Glorious daybreak!
Joy will abound.
Trading sometime
Body of clay,
For one immortal;
Hasten blest day!
—Lilian Guthrie
4368 Not Yet Made
Dr. Leon Tucker, a gifted preacher and teacher, was a frequent visitor in our home when I was young. Once he told us of a woman who had been broken by a great tragedy in her life. She had been living under the crushing weight of a heavy burden for so long that praise had given way to complaint. Finally she cried out in bitterness of soul, “Oh, I would to God I had never been made!” In response to her rebellious words a friend wisely replied, “Why my dear child, you are not made yet; you are only being made, and you are quarrelling with God’s process.”
—Selected
4369 Unfinished Rothschild Building
In the nineteenth century people who passed the Rothschild mansion in the fashionable quarter of London noticed that the end of one of the cornices was unfinished. The question may be asked: Could not the richest man in the world afford to pay for that cornice, or was the lack due to carelessness?
The explanation is a very simple yet suggestive one when it is known. Lord Rothschild was an orthodox Jew, and every pious Jew’s house, tradition says, must have some part unfinished, to bear testimony to the world that its occupant is only, like Abraham, a pilgrim and a stranger upon the earth.
—Selected
4370 Defining “Home”
Many years ago Blackstone, the great English jurist, was called upon to define “home.” A British nobleman had died. He had inherited titles and castles from both English and Scottish forebears, but had lived most of his life abroad. If he were adjudged a Scot, his estate would be administered under Scottish law, but if English, under English law. Where was his home?
The great interpreter of Law Blackstone wrote: “Home is that place from which when a man had departed, he is a wanderer until he has returned.”
—Donald Grey Barnhouse
4371 After The Last Lamp Is Dawn
A man whose youth and early manhood had been spent in evil ways, and who was converted to God, was one night giving his testimony. He had met an old drinking pal during the week who chaffed him for turning pious. “I’ll tell you what,” I said to him, “you know what I am (he was a lamplighter); when I go round turning out the lights, I look back, and all the road over which I’ve been walking is all darkness, and that’s what my past is like.
“I look on in front, and there’s a long row of twinkling lights to guide me, and that’s what the future is since I found Jesus.” “Yes,” says my friend, “but by-and-by you get to the last lamp and turn it out, and where are you then?” “Then,” says I, “why, when the last lamp goes out it’s dawn, and there ain’t no need for lamps when the morning comes.”
—Sunday School Times
4372 He Was Thankful For Blindness
A well-known English minister preached one Sunday for Dr. Phillips Brooks in Boston. After the service he started to walk to his hotel. He needed direction so he asked a man behind him the way. “Why you’re the minister I just heard. I know your voice. I am blind, but I can show you the way. I can take you to the door.”
The minister protested, but the blind man insisted, saying, “You will not refuse me the pleasure of helping you? I so seldom have the opportunity to render service. Everyone is so kind to me.” The two men walked arm-in-arm for ten minutes. “Here’s your hotel,” said the blind man.
Before parting, the blind man said, “I live alone. I can go about the streets without a guide. I am thankful for my blindness, because I have so much time for quiet meditation. There will be time enough in heaven for me to see everything!”
4373 Thanks For Your Patience
Two Christians were driving through an area where the road was being widened. At the end of the repair zone, a sign informed travellers, “Construction Ended. Thank You for Your Patience.”
“I think that would make an appropriate epitaph for my life,” said one of the Christians.
4374 When Lafayette Was Moved
One of the closing incidents in the life of General Lafayette of France was his visit to the United States which he loved so much. The people of this land desired to do him great honor. A fleet of vessels went out to meet him and the band played “Hail to the Chief” and the national hymn of France. It pleased him, but it is said that he was still unmoved.
Then, “As he came ashore, land and water trembled with the power of artillery. Old soldiers saluted him as they shouted his welcome and still he was unmoved. With waving banners and under triumphal arches he was taken to Castle Gardens where most of the great men of the nation gathered together to give him a greeting. The stolid old warrior was pleased, but apparently not very much moved.
But when he had taken his seat in the great amphitheatre, and when the curtain was lifted, he saw before him a perfect representation of the place in France where he was born and brought up, and when he saw the old home so filled with tender memories, the home where his father and mother had lived and died, it was said that the great man was touched and bowing his face in his hands, he wept like a child.
4375 When Jenny Lind Sang Of Home
Once when Jenny Lind was at the height of her fame as an opera singer, she was singing to an audience of 20,000 in Castle Gardens, New York, that seemed less appreciative of her talent than many other audiences for whom she had sung.
She sang most of the old classics and some that were currently popular, but there was only scattered applause. Then she began the strains of “Home, Sweet Home.” Tears began pouring from the eyes of thousands as waves of emotion swept over the great audience, then thunderous applause made the walls of the building ring. There seemed no heart there that was impervious to the pull of home.
—Evangelistic Illustration
4376 Scott Arrives Home
Toward the end of his life Sir Walter Scott, in ill-health, took a trip to Italy. One day in a bookshop he happened to see a lithograph of Abbottsford, his beautiful home on the Tweed in Scotland. Bursting into tears, he hurried from the shop and started at once for Scotland. When he reached London he was unable to stand, but he insisted that he be carried to the steamer for Leith.
On the journey to Tweedside he lay unconscious in the carriage; but when the carriage entered the valley of Gala, he began to look about him, and presently to murmur a name or two: “Gala Water, surely!” “Buckholm!” “Torwoodly!” And when the towers of Abbottsford came into view, he sprang up with a cry of delight.
—C. E. Macartney
4377 Nice Time Getting There
A skeptic once derided a Christian man by asking him: “Say, George, what would you say if when you die you found there wasn’t such a place as heaven after all?”
With a smile the believer replied: “I should say—well, l’ve had a fine time getting there anyway!”
Then the Christian sent a boomerang back to the skeptic—a question not quite so easy to answer.
“I say, Fred,” he asked, “what would you say if, when you die, you found there was such a place as hell after all?”
—Free Methodist
4378 Under Sealed Orders
Before he left Southampton on a recent Atlantic crossing, the captain of the Queen Elizabeth, Joseph E. Woolfenden was handed a sealed envelope and commanded not to open it until further instructions. Twenty-four hours before his ship was due in New York harbour, Captain Woolfenden received the message he had anticipated. It instructed him to open the sealed envelope in his cabin safe.
As the letter was opened, Captain Woolfenden discovered it was from Sir Basil Smallpeice, chairman of the Cunard company, and was to the effect that the Queen Elizabeth is to be retired at the end of the 1968 summer season.
There is a sense in which this world of ours is travelling under sealed orders.
—Prairie Overcomer
4379 The Embassy Building
One of our ambassadors to a foreign country recently said, “You have invited me to tell you about the duties of an ambassador. Let me begin by telling you first of the embassy, the place where we live. The embassy is a little spot of America set down in an alien land. On the walls we have pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and the President of the United States, with a big flag—Old Glory—high over everything. When we had prohibition in the United States we had prohibition in the embassy.
Inside the embassy the laws of our own country are supreme. We celebrate Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July. Outside, it is different, We celebrate none of these. Let me repeat, the embassy is a little spot of America in an alien land.”
—Selected
4380 Inn Of A Traveller
In a little churchyard in the south of England, Dean Alford lies buried, and on the tablet erected, is the beautiful inscription: “Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymum Proficiscetes—The Inn of a Traveller on his way to Jerusalem.” After the road which winds uphill, after the journey which takes the whole long day, is the hostelry, with “beds for all who come” and a quiet night.
—Current Anecdotes
4381 Sounds Of Heaven
Years ago a number of skylarks were imported from England and set loose in one of the eastern sections of the county, where they soon were at home and began to breed. One day a student of birds was listening with great interest to the song of the emigrant birds in the American landscape.
But as he was listening to their song he saw an Irish laboring man, who had heard the larks sing in Ireland, suddenly stop, take off his cap, and turn his face skyward, a look of surprise and joy and memory on his face as he listened entranced to the song of the bird that he had heard sing in his youth. For the bird expert it was only a scientific observation, but for the Irishman it was the listening of recollection and remembrance, of affection and of hope.
So through the gospel of Christ there come to us those songs which tell us of our heavenly home, the homeland of the soul.
4382 “You May Rest Here”
The city of Arequipa in southern Peru obtained its name through a misunderstanding. Diego de Almagro, the first white man who visited it in 1537, pointed to the ground and inquired the name of the locality. The natives thought that he was asking permission to sit down and they courteously replied, “Arequipa,” meaning “Yes, you may rest here.”
—Selected
4383 A Picture Of Love’s Welcome
In the Academy of 1871 a beautiful picture was exhibited by M. Anthony, entitled “The Return from Labour.” The picture is a triumph in the treatment of landscape, and with rare depth of colour and breadth of treatment portrays the evening sky, the masses of cloud marshalling themselves in the west on the last peep of day, the gathering twilight haze, and the cattle lazily seeking repose. But the chief joy of the picture lies in love’s welcome.
A labourer is returning from his toil, and his wife has come out to meet him, carrying their little child. They have just seen each other, and joy and love have sprung up in each of their hearts. And this love of man and woman and little child is more beautiful than all the beauty of nature and of sunset. In this cottage home there is that without which a palace becomes a prison—there is love.
—James Burns
4384 “Still On Mountain Time!”
A contributor to the Reader’s Digest tells this one:
“One evening in Albany, New York, I asked a sailor what time it was. He pulled out a huge watch and replied, “It’s 7:20.” I knew it was later. “Your watch has stopped, hasn’t it?” I asked.
““No,” he said, “I’m still on Mountain Standard Time. I am from southern Utah. When I joined the navy, Pa gave me this watch. He said it’d help me remember home.
““When my watch says 5 a.m., l know Dad is rollin’ out to milk the cows. And any night when it says 7:30 I know the whole family’s around a well-spread table, and Dad’s thankin’ God for what’s on it and askin’ Him to watch over me. I can almost smell the hot biscuits and bacon.
““It’s thinking about those things that makes me want to fight when the goin’ gets tough,” he concluded. “I can find out what time it is where I am easy enough. What I want to know is what time is it in Utah.””
4385 Rich Now, Money Later
At dinner the other night we were discussing certain of our affluent friends, and I remarked to my husband, “Someday we’ll be rich.”
He reached out, took my hand and replied, “Darling, we are rich. Someday we’ll have money.”
4386 Bird Of Paradise On Earth
An Easterner was being driven by a rancher over a blistering and almost barren stretch of West Texas when a large brightly-colored bird scurried across the road in front of them. The visitor asked what it was.
“That’s a bird of paradise,” said the rancher.
“Pretty long way from home, isn’t he!” remarked the visitor.
4387 Epigram On Pilgrimage (Life)
• Warning to tourists in Zion National Park: “Take nothing but pictures—leave nothing but footprints.”
—Jake Weiner
See also: God, Protection of ; Heaven ; Life, Christian ; Persecution.