It was a benchmark moment in my life.
Bored with college in Southern California I was visiting my Dad, who lived in Southern Missouri, over the Thanksgiving break. It was a seasonal night—that alone made it different from my home where the four seasons of the Heartland were replaced with the four venues of home, desert, ocean, and mountains all encompassed within a several hour driving sphere.
His 75-year-old farmhouse, located off the country road about a quarter mile, was to me, an oasis in a sea of nobody. The closest house was a half of mile away, the next over a mile. Grassland and woods were all I could really see, lit up by the night stars, as I walked out on the aged-wood porch and up the cracked-cement “sidewalk” poured, DIY (as nearly all things were then), decades ago.
There, standing in the middle of a comparative nowhere from where I had been just days earlier, I looked up, exhaled deeply, and gazed up at the beauty in the heavenlies—something I had never really taken the time or effort to do before. In that moment, enraptured by the sight, I knew this was where I needed to be. To be in a place where I could always look up and see the beauty, and for me the liberty, was all I needed.
Six weeks later I moved. Now, over 41 years later, there are still no regrets.
Gazing into the heavenlies still gives me that same feeling, if not even more, ignited so long ago. Though, now living in the city and about 150 miles from my benchmark spot, I must make a conscious effort to be in a good place to look up to see as clearly now as I did then.
The Apostle Paul told Titus to look “for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (2:13). He also shared with Titus the conscious effort to be in a good place to look up: “to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age” (v. 12).
As I live Paul’s instructions daily, it’s as if I am standing back on that cracked sidewalk, in the middle of nowhere, with an unencumbered view of the heavenlies—only now I am not just looking at the stars; rather, I am looking for the One who made them!
