I Hear Tell, You're Doin' Well, Good Things Have Come to You

I was hoping to be able to get the story of my road trip finished, but I’ve had to work too late for that. A long evening of good solid work it was, and now that I’m sitting in the loft of a rather lovely summer lodge, overlooking a crackling fire and a room full of pleasantly inebriated guests, I am happily exhausted. And, as I type out a few thoughts while sitting in an easy chair with a mug of tea and a pot of hot water, I think myself a proper English scholar.

I’ve begun to regard this place as a good temporary home. I’ll be glad to leave it behind as soon as I reasonably can, but for now, it is a beautiful place and I am resolved to explore and enjoy it to the fullest possible extent.

Much of my newfound contentment has come about as a result of the encouragement that I receive daily, almost hourly, from all of you back home. I’ve also been helped along by the knowledge of your prayers. The words, “I’ll pray for you,” have never been much more to me than a nice, but truly pithy, bit of consolation. One may as well have said, “Hang in there, sport;” or “keep a stiff upper lip.” Now, though, I hold those words as real truth, and take them as a promise of real, holy encouragement. Does the phrase “holy encouragement” seem odd? It did to me, until I read the first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans. There, I found that Paul longed to share a spiritual gift with the Roman church, a church which he had desired to visit more than any other for years. What great gift could the Apostle to the Gentiles be so eager to share with the single most powerful church of the Western world? Encouragement, plain, simple, and life-sustaining.

In addition to the fortitude I’ve taken from your collective support, I’ve been able to settle in a bit over the last two weeks, and life here has taken on a certain sort of normalcy. As my father promised, a few days with a solid routine allowed me to adjust to the point of determination. Because of some successful time spent here, I could contemplate a bit more, and knew that I could endure the summer.

However, endurance alone might make for a miserable time. Instead, God saw my paltry wager of grudging endurance and raised me true joy. I remembered that I am to be content in all things, because of the marvelous gift of salvation and righteousness that I’ve been given. If, as the prophet Micah wrote, the righteous are to live by faith, then surely I can exercise faith in the hope I have. I mean both hope for a spiritual transformation, as well as hope for an enjoyable summer, and while these two may exist on entirely different planes of consequence, I want both very much. Finally, I live in the hope that one day this time away from home will end, and I can look back on it as a time of growth and peace, and spiritual discipline, and then move forward without a single regret. So, I can be content in the place I have found myself, and I can press onward and upward.

All this is to say that I’m doing better. The things that you’ve all said or written to me have been moments of home to me while I’ve been far off; while bound to this place, and not entirely thrilled about that bondage, your thoughts and prayers have allowed me to return to a faraway place of joy and love somewhere in East Tennessee for brief moments, and for those brief respites I cannot sufficiently express to any of you my gratitude. I only hope that when this is all over, I can manage to somehow express the love I have for you all, which has been made so much more apparent to me in this difficult time.

If any of you should see another one of you, tell that other one thanks for me.