(While this piece was written back in 2016 when I was on the mission field in Taiwan, we pray it helps you understand missionaries traveling “home” this summer who may now struggle to feel at home in any one place. – Emily (Barz) Belvery)
“There are pieces of my heart in many places.
There are pieces that drift lazily across a backyard patio on the scent of coffee and freshly-mown grass and pieces that roll over Iowa hills at twilight on the wings of a tailwind.
There are pieces on the plains of Nebraska, in old dorms with peculiar, age-old scents, in classrooms and offices stacked with books and papers and even overheads, over a sloping floor bathed in colored light and echoing with an acapella doxology – in the middle of nowhere and the middle of everywhere.
Sometimes your heart fixes on the strangest places.
There are pieces in St. Louis – that second home for Sewardites, Nebraska round two.
Pieces wrapped up in popcorn and pinochle and Let Us Exalt His Name – and then dispersed across the country, too many miles apart for this small world where everyone is only six degrees from a Barz.
Pieces fragilely held together by internet across a million time zones and seven-way Google hangouts – pieces sewn up in letters and penned in pictures and memories and oh so many stories.
But there are also pieces of my heart that hover over rice fields and quiver in the haze of humidity and pollution, gazing at distant mountains.
There are pieces that smile in Mandarin and grasp chopsticks in an accepted offer of shared meals and lives and cups of tea.
There are pieces that laugh at the absurdity of language and the extravagant love of the Father and pieces that cry at the futility of idols and the fear of what we can’t understand.
There are pieces of my heart in many places.
“My heart lives in so many places. With so many people. But God whispers to me that I really have only one home, and that is with Him. I will never be content on this earth. I will always be a nomad. It was meant to be that way. My heart was created with a desire for a home, a nest, a sanctuary, and that can be found only with Him in Heaven. And I will continue bouncing from one home to another, loving with everything I have in whatever location I currently reside, excitedly awaiting the day when I am called heavenward and He says to me, ‘Welcome home.’”
– Kisses From Katie by Katie Davis
David prayed, “Unite my heart to fear Your name.” (Psalm 86)
I used to think that was strange because you need a plurality to be able to unite. You can’t unite one thing.
Then I realized how broken and scattered by sin my heart is – how often it is running off to worship other things and to seek honor and satisfaction in places other than at the throne of the Father – how often it’s splintered and divided between the things of the flesh and the things of the Spirit.
Now I realize my heart is also broken and scattered by separation, pieces left behind in every place I’ve lived and loved.
And yet – it’s also perfectly whole. “For great is [His] steadfast love toward me” and “I will glorify [His] name forever.” In the love of the Father, my heart is more whole and more full than it’s ever been before.
And someday even the tearing of separation will be perfectly mended as “all the nations You have made shall come and worship before You, O Lord, and shall glorify Your name.” And all the pieces of God’s sacrificial heart will be perfectly united in eternal unity and unending praise.
Amen and so be it.”
