March 16, 2017 (Thursday)
In his poem, “The Death of the Hired Man,” Robert Frost defines “Home.” One of his characters says, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
Here is a picture of “home” to me. Rockport, Texas. I lived 18 years growing up in Houston, and moved from one place to another 18 times, if I remember correctly. When I then went to college, I lived in four different places during those four years in Waco. Then back to Houston three months, to Fort Worth one month, three months in Cleburne, one and one-half years in Lampasas, one and one-half years in Fort Worth, two and one-half years at Briar (near Fort Worth), two years at Kosse, three and one-half years in Dallas, and, finally, fifty-two years in Rockport–home, sweet home. We lived in the FBC parsonage downtown for five and one-half years, then, in 1970, just in time for Hurricane Celia, to this house in Oak Terrace, where we have been for 47 years. From 2004 to 2010, I moved back and forth to Houston, but Rockport was always home. My children, “preacher’s kids,” had the opportunity not afforded to many “pk’s,” to attend the same schools year after year, and finally all five of them graduated from the same school. Yep, this is our home.
Our house, a picture made by Google in 2011
Made possible by the generosity of the First Baptist Church of Rockport
I love the hymns about heaven and salvation as home. “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, ‘Come home, ‘” “Lord, I’m coming home,” “Oh, think of the home over there,” “Sweet Beulah land,” “..and cast a wishful eye to Canaan’s fair and happy land where my possessions lie,” “Jesus is calling, is tenderly calling you home,” and many, many more. The hymn writers have captured a beautiful thought as they have written these hymns. Indeed, “there’s no place like home.”