Homesickness - No. 2 by Mrs. L. D. Avery-Suttle

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 4, 1913

Homesickness — No. 2

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Suttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Suttle

Somehow, as these memories come thronging into my mind, my heart grows tender. The cruel years, with their burdens and sorrows and sordid cares, melt away—and I am a child again. But when I wake from my reverie, I know that the old home has gone, and the winding path has grown up with weeds, and the old gray rock has long ago disappeared. The sugar-bush has been cut down by stranger hands, strange faces and forms flit about, and strange feet press the soil which fond memory deems almost sacred ground. Perhaps Time has dealt kindly with some of us. It may be our shoulders are not yet bent by his heavy hand, and cheek and brow are not yet furrowed by his cruel fingers. But we realize with sadness that we are no longer young. The halcyon days of youth are gone forever. The rosy tints of sunrise have given place to the fervid skies of noonday or to the somber hues of twilight. Every little while the news comes to us that another and another of the friends of our youth have laid down the armor and folded the precious hands in dreamless sleep. We vainly try to realize that we shall never see them again in this life—never! We must trudge along without their presence, without their kindly words of cheer, until we, too, falter and pause in the journey, and lie down to rest—until the morning. It is good for us to meditate; but it is blessed to remember that altho the night must come—the night of sorrow and parting and pain and death, to some of us—the morning is very, very near. Then, when we feel twinges of homesickness, let us think upon the resurrection day; this will calm our hearts unspeakably. O, if only we could get a faint glimpse of the many mansions! If only we might catch a little gleam of the glory from the rainbow-circled throne, if we might only hear one faintest strain of the music of the heavenly choir, it would forever cure us of all our longings after earth, and we should only be homesick for heaven.

But the Creator always intended us to love our home—even our earthly home. And I am sure that He is not only willing for us to beautify it, and make it sweet, inviting, and attractive, but He desires us to do so; else He would never have planted the bowers of Eden, with its bewildering array of bright colors, beautiful forms, and satisfying fruits and flowers. Why did not the Almighty place a carpet of inky blackness beneath Adam’s feet, instead of a soft and luxurious blanket of living green? Why draped He not the bowers of Eden with melancholy gray, or somberest brown? Why did He plant the choicest flowers—the rarest fruits? Why does He spread out to our enraptured gaze the varied beauties of hill and valley and sky and plain?—There is but one answer: He delights in beauty, and He has made us to delight in it; otherwise we should not be able to appreciate the glories and the superlative beauties of the “many mansions.”

There is no question but that the man and the woman delighted in their Eden home; neither is there any doubt that, after having been driven, by the flaming sword, from its dear, familiar shades and its sweet-scented bowers, they suffered all the miseries of homesickness.

For the man, there was appointed the thorn and the thistle instead of the fruit and the flower; the sweat drops of exhausting labor instead of the pleasant tasks of his one time bowers of delight.

For the woman were left soul-racking memories of a life of blissful innocence,—memories of face-to-face communion with the sinless inhabitants of heaven. But now, amid the gripping pangs of sorrow, must she people an accursed and outcast world. Ah, how piercing must have been her regret! How must she have turned her tear-dimmed eyes past the thorn and the thistle and the fading leaf and the worm-eaten branch,—aye, past the flaming sword of the angel, toward the beautiful bowers of her Eden home! Homesick?—Yes; such homesickness as you and I can not understand. Ah, nothing less than the shining sword with its multitude of gleaming edges, which gyrated and flashed and “turned every way,” as the mighty sentinel waved it above the familiar gateway, could have prevented the return of the home-hungry and disconsolate pair.

The Chinese character for the word “home” is a rude picture of a roof, a chimney, and a pig; and the missionary says that the chief topic of conversation is the pig—always the pig!

Well, I am glad to say that the Chinese are busy coining another character to represent the home. This time it is to be a man, a woman, and a heart. I am also glad that the Christian idea of what home ought to be, has been in a great measure responsible for this happy change in sentiment.

This feeling of homesickness has afflicted the sons and daughters of earth, betimes, ever since the days of Adam. Do you suppose that Abraham ever knew the sickening pangs of home-hunger? We calmly read the simple account of his wanderings. It does not affect us very much; and I am a trifle afraid that we read it carelessly; it all happened so many years ago. But it is a remarkable story. If we read between the lines we will be astonished to see how plainly is revealed the inner life and the real heart-throbbings of a wonderful man.

More than forty centuries have rolled away since the Almighty gave to this man of faith his great commission,—such a commission as was never given before nor since to any son or daughter of Adam.