Yearning for home

So I'm sitting here at a restaurant in the O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg and feeling a little bit -- off.  Af first I thought it was loneliness.  But then I recognize the feeling or what it is.

I am homesick.

"Really?" I ask myself.  "NOW you get homesick?  Now, when you are only hours from leaving and one flight (a long one, but only one) from home?"

Yes, now.

Ok, so why now?

I love Africa.  I love being here.  People who hear me talk about my trips here have told me how obvious it is.  Not a day has gone by that I have not been surrounded by people who love me and who feel like family to me.

So why am I homesick?

Well, for starters, I think it's just that last hurdle to get over before getting home.  There is now nothing left for me do do except wait.  Business keeps me from being homesick.  Idleness gets me thinking of home.

I think the other factor is just the unfamiliarity of my surroundings.  America isn't necessarily better than Africa, but to me it is much more familiar.  As an example, take ketchup.

I love ketchup on my fries (uh, make that chips here).  And Pennsylvania's own Heinz Ketchup is by far the best.  But that's not what they have here.  When I ask for ketchup, they bring me "tomato sauce."  It looks like ketchup, but it is not ketchup.  Some of it is too sweet, some of it is strangely spiced, some of it is runny.  I think I have had 5 different varieties and not one of them was, well, KETCHUP. 

Another example is the currency.  Keeping track of the exchange rates, and  having four different currencies(and never, it seems, the coin I need).

Little things like that. 

I think that, fundamentally, I yearn for that familiar place that is home.  It is a shadow of the yearning for heaven.

The apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 5:1-2

"For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling" (ESV)

We long to leave our temporary tent and be in our permanent home.