Living out of a suitcase

At the moment I'm living out of a suitcase. Hence no entry in this blog last weekend. I hope you're patiently sticking with me.

As a student, I was used to this sort of existence. However, you expect to be more settled after student days. Even if you experience a number of house moves, you hope and expect that certain things will remain familiar: your family, your network of friends, your profession, places that you call "home" wherever you happen to live at the time.

Whether this is God's intention for the human race is not so clear. He never allowed His people Israel to forget that they were once nomadic tent-dwellers, depending on Him to guide their every move. Jesus claimed that while foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, He had nowhere to lay His head.

Right now I feel as though I have well and truly joined the club. I am house-sitting for someone, which is great as it helps me avoid living next to a church whose pastorate I have left. Seventy miles away, my worldly goods fill endless mounds of storage bins. I have yet to move out of the Manse but it is clearly no longer home.

I've struggled to relax so far, because my mind is in self-preservation mode and working overtime. However, I calmed myself this evening by playing a very old hymn, "God be in my head". God is in every part of me, right now, and I must live life positively for Him. At the same time, the hymn comes from an age when journey's end, eternal life in the next world, loomed so much larger for people than it does today. From the ancient words I take quiet satisfaction that, when my day is done, God will be there still:

God be at mine end
and at my departing.