I
wonder how many keys you have on your key ring? I heard a talk once in which the speaker said that the more keys
you have, the more it represents control of your own life. A child has no keys, neither does a
prisoner. But as an adult we usually
carry many keys…to the house, office, car; maybe even to other people’s
houses! As we draw closer to our
departure from Nettleham we have begun to realise that we are slowly but surely
losing all our keys! This weekend I
handed my little car over to our daughter, Emily along with the keys. Soon Mark will hand over his chapel key and
the keys to the Godpod. And then, on 30th
July, we will hand over our house keys to the Methodist property steward. All we’ll be left with then will be the key
to Mark’s car and yet in December when we fly out of the UK we will hand even
that key over to someone and leave the country with no keys! We will have relinquished all control over
our own lives for a time!
This
thought has been profound for us this weekend as we contemplate and prepare for
the many losses we will face in the coming weeks and months. We both feel very unsettled and it is hard
at times to focus on things that are happening day to day. Our house is becoming less and less like a
home and more like a shell of a home and we know that from 30th July
we will have no base until we reach our new home in Guyana.
As
we sort out all our earthly belongings and decide whether it is going into
storage, being sent out to Guyana, travelling in the car with us for the summer
or being given away; as we cancel all our standing orders and terminate all our
contracts and commitments we are acutely aware that our lives are about to
change in so many ways. In some ways it
is quite liberating to lay it all down and start again without all the
trappings we usually hold so dear but in other ways it is quite difficult to
come to terms with.
We
value the prayers, support and patience of all of our friends and family at
this time of transition and apologise if we don’t seem quite with it at the
moment!! A comment in my Bible notes
today really struck me. It said, ‘If
you have a home don’t get too settled because actually you are not home yet.’ We know that we have many moves ahead of us
in the coming months and years and yet we are always just travelling
through. It doesn’t pay for any of us
to get too settled because one day we will leave everything behind and Jesus
has promised those who love him will have a room in his Father’s house – then
we will be truly home and settled. And
we won’t need any keys!
