And yet, and yet…

What reminds you of the places you come from?

A few weeks ago, we had a busy Saturday. We went to Lockhart and had some barbecue at Black’s and Kreuz. (Kreuz was better this time…though I know that the Smitty’s, Terry Black’s, and Chisholm Trail were all available. The full BBQ crawl is a young man’s game.) We went swimming in the hot Texas Spring sun. We drove across prairies and creeks and brush to arrive back in our Central Texas home.

As I took my boy upstairs for bed that evening, I couldn’t help thinking to myself at the wonder of the aromatic blend of smoke and chlorine. For me, that’s the smell of boyhood in Texas, experienced through the sun and water and miles of open sky.

There are sounds and scents that take us back to a place and time unexpectedly. The smell of freshly cut grass and glove leather, dust in the breeze, and the sound of an airplane propeller take me back to pony league baseball. The smell of impending rain and the patter of rain drops against windows take me back to reading on the back porch of my house as a summer storm rolled through. The smell of petrol and cigarette smoke take me back to walking in the streets of Poland. The cawing of crows and the smell of pine and cedar, crunching over piles of leaves take me back to my grandparents’ house in Arkansas. The crunch of mixed gravel and rock under my feet and the whispering wind rolling through forests and sparkling aspen groves take me back to hiking in Colorado.

They all take me back.

It seems as we age that more and more things take us back to the places we were. And try as we might to cultivate and control those memories, it usually is the slightest thing that rockets us back 20, 30, 40 years.

There’s something deep there. We have these attachments to the places we are from. It’s more than just inhabiting a place. Our geographies shape our hearts, inspire our souls. The land means something.

In the Bible, I read over and over again of the importance of the land to the People of God. It shapes them, moves them, infuriates them, charms them. It is a place of which they dream and place that is constantly somewhere in the corner of their hearts, no matter where they go. The land means something.

In the US, we are one of the most mobile societies in the history of the world. With the connections of the internet, advances in travel, and expansion of economy, many people live in strange lands, strange places. It sometimes feels like just an address, but the land means something.

Where all the culture of metamodernism tells us that we are ghosts in the world, the product of algorithms and social media campaigns, we know that the truth is something different. The screens can’t conquer the aroma, the grit, the sound, the touch of the places we are from. The land means something.

When we are tempted to abuse or misuse the gift of our land, we remember that we don’t function in a vacuum. We are a part of this world. We aren’t just spirits with bodies, but we are also bodies with spirits. God gave us the senses not to just take in, but to impact and change the world around us. Our experience of life isn’t just data; it’s footprints in the sand, smudges of curious toddler foreheads on windows.

How are you intentionally loving where you live? Do you maneuver through the world, head and eyes down, only dreaming of AI-generated landscapes? Or do you feel it? Do you hear it? Do you smell it?

Because when we are able to engage and experience and immerse ourselves in the world around us, we’re no longer algorithms or binary in a machine. We’re not data or information or credit card numbers.

You are human. You matter. Your experience of the world matters.

God placed you here on purpose, with purpose. It may be that you just haven’t crested the hill to discover it yet. Part of the role of our meditation upon the Word of God isn’t to separate ourselves from the physical world, but to experience the fullness of it. And God created this world to teach us and show us the wonders of his invisible nature, his power, his grace. As body without soul is dead, so also is a world with the Spirit of God.

In these seasons of travel, slow down a bit. Experience the world. Invite the Lord to teach you new things about himself and about yourself through the senses of the world around you, seen through the eyes of Scripture. Go touch grass friend. Smell the sea. Eat the barbecue and marvel at the glowing embers. Splash in the pool and listen to the laughter of the children experiencing the fresh coolness within. Hold the hands of those you love and see the eternity that God has placed in them.

The land means something.

Signs and wonders y’all.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song
    in a foreign land?
⁵ If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
    let my right hand forget its skill!
⁶ Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
    if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
    above my highest joy! Psalm 137:4-6