Where's That?

                                                 Where's That?


I've spent a lot of my life explaining where I was from or even where I was. People hadn't heard, didn't know. It wasn't their fault. They weren't ignorant or not well traveled. They just came from different regions, larger places or traveled too fast to notice the smaller environs of my dwelling places. I heard, "where's that?" a lot, often with an aire of disdain if not disbelief.

I grew up on a farm about three miles south of Milford, TX*. "Where's that?" you ask. Here we go again. It happened when I went to college at Howard Payne University. "Where's that?" It's a small liberal arts college in Brownwood. I pastored in Bronte. "Where's that?" It's between Abilene and San Angelo. "Shouldn't that be pronounced 'Bron-te`, like Emily or Charlotte? Yeah, tell that to the folks in west Texas who call it Bront with no `e on the end.  And so it went. In a place everyone in Texas knew, Bryan, I pastored West Oaks Baptist Church. "Where's that?" You could tell them you worshipped in an aerobic center and then a former barbeque restaurant. People just looked at you funny. Everyone in the panhandle knew Hereford when I lived there. If we came back to the DFW area or went to a pastor's conference  and people asked where I was pastoring these days it would happen again. ''Where's Hereford?" It's 45 miles sw of Amarillo and then came the blank look. If they hadn't actually been there or through there, it didn't exist. Trust me, if you ever got close, your nose would know it existed.

Now I live outside of Whitney, TX.in a community called White Bluff. "Where's that?" Same song, about the seventh verse for me. I am a lot more comfortable with the explanations now. Part of it is aging with grace. Yeah, right. Part of it is not only the grace of aging but the grace of understanding that no one truly knows where any one else is from or what they have been through. We might know the town but not the traffic that town had on some one's heart. We might recognize a street but do we ever know how another person experienced that street?. Most probably it was mixtures of joy and sadness, affirmation and abuse, grief and elation, life and death. Those experiences are everywhere, city or country, big or little.

I've also discovered in my travels that God never has to ask "where's that?" He knows. He knows where I am, my rising up and my sitting down; when I go out and my lying down. He just knows. One of the saddest scriptures is in Genesis 3: 9. After Adam and Eve had sinned they turned the local fruit stand into the first clothing store and hid themselves. God came walking through the garden in the cool of the evening to visit with them. They are no where to be seen. Strange... so God asks a strange question. In English it is "Where are you?'' In the Hebrew, it is one word and the "are you" is implied but the single word is simply 'where.'  O, to be sure, God knows where they are.  He is calling for transparency. He is seeking confession. I believe I can almost hear His broken heart calling out "why?"

But what we get is one word: ''where?''

Has God ever called out to you "where?" When I found myself in fear instead of trust did I hear Him say 'where?' When I resided on the corner of pride and stubbornness, did I hear 'where?' When I longed to move to anger, vengeance did I hear a whispered 'where' on the Wind? I've put my heart in a lot of places that He could walk by and cry 'where?'

But He always knew. In Milford He knew where I was and where He would send me. At Howard Payne, He knew what bench I prayed on in the cool of the (late) evening. In tiny churches in big towns or bigger churches in small towns, I never had to explain. He knew. He knew where I was. It was a promise He made and kept: "I'll never leave you nor forsake you." (Heb.13:5)

The promise is still good today. He knows where you are. He just knows.

Found,
Cos

*between Mountain Springs and Forreston