Daily Guideposts - 20 Day SampleExemplo

Worth a Thousand Words

The photo was tacked to a bulletin board in the family room. I passed it every time I opened the door to the garage. This time I stopped to look. There were the four of us: Kate, me, our kids Frances and Benjamin.

Wrapped in parkas against the winter cold, we stood on our old New York street in front of our apartment. A friend took the picture moments before we left New York for California. We’re smiling but we look apprehensive.

Six months later I still felt apprehensive. Past the door to the garage was our new car. We didn’t have a car in New York. We took subways. I like subways. I don’t like the suburbs, I thought.

I sighed. I missed our apartment too. I wonder who lives there now? I remembered gazing out our third-floor windows at the honking streets below. Rocking the kids to sleep in the glow of nighttime streetlights.

Watching snow fall on the churchyard next door.

“It doesn’t help to dwell on the past,” Kate often reminded me. Easy for her to say. She liked her new job as rector of an Episcopal church. “Our true home is with God,” she always added.

I stared longingly at the photo. Wait a second. Actually, that wasn’t our apartment in the background. It was the apartment across the street.

How come I’d never noticed before? I was so full of self-pity I’d simply assumed it was our apartment. I’d made up an entire story about that photo, but of course it wasn’t about the apartment at all. It was about the four of us: Kate, me, Frances and Benjamin. We were together there just like we’re together here.

Our true home is with God. I struggled with those words here in this new place. But surely being together with family gives us at least a glimpse of God’s eternal love. In New York. In California. Anywhere.

Help me feel Your presence, God, wherever I am.

—Jim Hinch

Digging Deeper: Pss. 91:1, 139:7–10; Acts 2:28