Where You Hang Your Hat

So: one month, 2741 km, one u-haul with auto transport, 4 jumbo rolls of Saran Wrap, 8 rolls of packing tape, 3 weeks of unpacking and (what feels like) 232 beaurocratic forms later, we're safely settled in Oshawa. As much as you can be after this kind of major life upheaval, we're ready to begin a new chapter, in a new city, in a new province with a new ministry, new church, new neighbours, new home.

As I look back over the last month, with all its crises, decisions, challenges and adventures, it strikes me that moving is one of those rare life-events that really test your spiritual, physical and mental mettle all at once. You get a unique, cringing glimpse of your own character when you're standing at the pay phone for hours on end in a lonely truck stop in Nowhere-ville Northern Ontario, with all your worldly goods loaded into a 1600 cubic foot transport van behind you, with your children wandering the parking lot listlessly, while you try as calmly as you can to arrange some last minute mortgage details that somehow fell through the cracks-- minor details without which you may not have a home waiting for you when you arrive in Oshawa.

For those of you who have been waiting with bated breath to begin exploring some new terra incognita with me, let me assure you that I intend to have my blog up to cruising speed again starting next week. But today, still thinking about the character-refining spirituality of moving and all, I'm mulling over some of the Bible verses that seemed to take on new layers of significance during the last month. Without further comment, here's a few that have been running through my heart over the course of this adventure-- a little "U-Haul meets lectio divina" for you:

Matthew 8:19-20: A scribe came up and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

1 Peter 2:11: Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul.

Leviticus 14:48-53 (don't ask): If the priest comes to examine [the house] and the mildew has not spread after the house has been plastered, he shall pronounce the house clean, because the mildew is gone. To purify the house he is to take two birds and some cedar wood, scarlet yarn and hyssop. He shall kill one of the birds over fresh water in a clay pot. Then he is to take the cedar wood, the hyssop, the scarlet yarn and the live bird, dip them in the blood of the dead bird and the fresh water, and sprinkle the house seven times ... Then he is to release the live bird in the open fields outside the town. In this way he will make atonement for the house and it will be clean.

Mark 10:29-31: Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.