On a recent drive to Hattiesburg to surprise my daughter in college, it started to hit me how long a short ride can be. It’s only ninety miles, but it seemed like forever.
The trip to Hattiesburg isn’t listed on any magazine’s list of “must-do” road trips in the South. You will see a lot of pine trees…and more pine trees. I always chuckle to myself when I make drives like this through Mississippi that there are places in the world fretting about overpopulation. The telephone poles vastly outnumber the population. It’s beautiful land filled with good people…but it can make for a long drive. Over each hill, you think, “Am I there yet?”
Now, why does a ninety-mile drive seem to take so long? Because I have something in Hattiesburg now that I love. I don’t want to waste what part of the day I have driving; I want to spend that time with my daughter. She is legally an “adult”…but she is still my little girl.
What’s funny about this, though, is that when I leave Hattiesburg, the ride home seems long, too. Now, technically, the ride south from Hattiesburg is longer. I’m serious. The northbound lane of Highway 49 is flatter than the southbound lane. When the southbound lane was built, very little fill dirt was used, and you have a lot more hills headed south. Over time, it makes the trip just a little longer.
But it’s not the extra few tenths of a mile that makes it a long drive…it’s because I’m ready to get home…and I have two people I love at home waiting on me.
On almost every trip I’ve been on, the return trip seems longer. Why? Because I’m ready to be home.
Home for the Christian is not this world.
I love the old songs. I love to sing, “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through, my treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue.”
Vance Havner said, “If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world.”
Our home is not here…our home awaits us.
Sometimes we have a longing for something that we just can’t put our finger on. We are longing for home. We are longing for a great reunion day. We are looking forward to seeing loved ones again. We long to see Jesus Christ…the One we have read about and sung about…face-to-face.
The trip can be long when you are looking forward to being with someone you love.
Keep moving. Keep your eyes fixed and your path straight. Over the next hill…you may be home.
Second Corinthians 5:1 tells us, “…we have a building from God, an eternal dwelling in the heavens, not made with hands.”
Until the next page…
Scott Sullivan
The Notebook
Scott Sullivan 
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