A FAR COUNTRY

I love to travel!  It started slow.  One very tiny trip.  Another small trip two years later.  I knew I wanted to travel but there was also a necessary item called money.  We did not have much of it!  A few years later made numerous trips to Florida because that is where hubby’s uncle lived.  Eventually –

Eventually, as we saved a bit here and there, we expanded our horizons.  Some women shop.  I put money back for vacations.  Some kids got toys for Christmas.  One year, our kids got a cooler, a two gallon water jug, an atlas, a couple of really bright flashlights and a newspaper grill.  (Yes it is a real thing.)  I never thought how that would sound when they went back to school and were asked, “What did you get for Christmas?”  I am not sure how they responded but I bet the other kids felt sorry for them.  I mean, who wants an atlas under the tree?

Thankfully, hubby finally realized vacations were going to happen so he might as well relax and enjoy our adventures.  He has fun as I navigate him onto interstates, two lane highways and dirt roads.  The dirt roads always came as a surprise.  Somehow, I always think a tiny line in the atlas only means less blacktop.  We have been on one lane roads and extremely crooked roads.  I swear they do not look that crooked in the atlas.  Have those atlas people ever driven on the Going to the Sun Road or US 191 from north to south?  Now that I have an iPad, I can see exactly what we are in for and warn him in advance.  No!  I do not route him to a more direct route.  What fun would that be?

I am one state and a few islands ahead of Bill.  Silly man likes to keep his feet on the ground and would not fly to Hawaii nor sail off into the sunset.  We have been very blessed to travel to lands near and far. 

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A minister was talking about the parable of the prodigal son and said that “distant country” or “far country” meant being separated from God.  I had never thought about it that way.  I just thought the young son left town, didn’t do so great and came home. 

My next thought was THANK YOU LORD THAT WHEN I HAVE BEEN IN A FAR COUNTRY I WAS NOT SEPARATED FROM YOU!!!

What followed in my head was a whirlwind of thoughts. 

-          Traveling does not separate you from God.

-          You could be separated from God while sitting in your easy chair.

-          Oh, I never want to be separated from God.

-          But how can I be separated when God is always with me?

-          What would it feel like to be separated from God?

-          What if you had never known God?

-          What?  If?  How? 

Slowly, my mind decided the word separated is a place I never want to be.  But guess what – IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN!! 

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:  “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

Of all things I might think I need to worry about, being separated from God is not one of them.  With Jesus as my Lord, I am a conqueror!  It does not say this or that can separate me.  It says NEITHER and NOR.  Those words mean this sheep is never – NEVER – separated from God.  Not when I am in my easy chair and not when I am thousands of miles away.

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This picture is titled The Glory of God.

This Glorious God loves you and you are never separated from Him!!!