Homesick

As I sat on the back porch Friday, blowing bubbles with Gary and Sage, I realized I was feeling homesick. The combination of the warm sun, and the chilly breeze, the dry air, with the desert in the distance all took me somewhere familiar, somewhere I'd called home for a short while a decade and a half ago: the Middle East, Jerusalem, to be exact. There was no golden dome, no white limestone walls, no muezen singing the call to prayer, no ancient spice of the old city in the air, but something felt familiar. Do my children know they walk in the same climate in which the Saviour walked? Do they know that the sun feels like it does in the Judean wilderness, the nights are as cold and clear as in the fields near Bethlehem, and the sound of the breezes blowing in the palm trees is the same as on the Galilean shores? The pomegranite and olive and fig trees know. Someday I hope to show them.