Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Bridge (07/31/08)
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TITLE: Homecoming | Previous Challenge Entry
By Pam Novak
08/04/08 -
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In June, my husband and I left the Pacific Northwest, my home of 24 years, to return to upstate New York, just a couple of hours north of where I grew up. In the Northwest, it’s the history and scale of the land that engages us – the big dark pines, the great wide river, the enormous snowy mountains. The people make their lives within that awesome landscape and can’t help but be aware of its majesty. That impressed me when I first came west, and my return to the Northeast brings it to mind again, because here it’s man’s history that dominates. We now live in a 180-year-old house, and without leaving its walls I can trace the technology, aesthetics, and craftsmanship of generations. My house, my village, my state all have stories that are told primarily in terms of human activity. And yet lately, we’ve discovered, we have a bat.
I remember reading that the first European settlers believed that the dark forests represented a kind of spiritual evil, and the remedy of course was to cut them down, make them useful for houses and fences and fuel, and use the clearings for farms. The pace of change accelerated, and now most of those houses and farms are long gone. Much of what I remember from childhood is gone or drastically altered. I find myself looking for the big white mountains to get my bearings, and then I remember I left them 3000 miles behind me. But now we have a bat.
None of my relatives, it seems, are all that keen on bats, whether they’re inside or outside, and I admit the bat at close range is unnerving. It must be like the forests our forebears couldn’t wait to cut down; it’s unknown, so it must be evil. But, I consider, God made the bat to be a creature of the night. It has a purpose that’s beneficial to us. Getting into our house is an accident; the bat means us no harm. It’s just looking for its meal of insects and it made a wrong turn. It happily lets my husband escort it out the front door.
I have to admit that I rather like having occasional visits from the bat. It reminds me that man doesn’t really control nature here any more than in the west or anyplace else. The landscape may not be as awe-inspiring, but God’s hand is just as much in it. Like the bat, I sometimes get off course in pursuit of my goals, and just as my husband helps the bat get back on course, we depend on the Lord to show us our purpose for where we are now. Who are we to condemn bats as nasty and disease-ridden, any more than to say that God made mistakes in creation or that He’s not able to execute His good purposes wherever we wander? I’ve decided it’s better to learn more about bats than to fear them. It’s better to listen to God than to assume I know best. When I lived out west, I loved it but I knew it wasn’t really home. Now I’ve returned “home” and it’s not the way I thought it would be. If only I could simply be shooed out the front door and find myself back where I really belong! And where on earth would that be?
My husband is planning to build a bat house to put in the tree at the end of the back yard. Maybe “our” bat will find it, but in any case other bats will, and they’ll be in little danger, then, of being harmed by frightened homeowners. It’s a good thing to do, while we learn to feel at home ourselves.
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
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