I knew something was awry recently when I first stepped into our cottage on Rock Lake. The entry smelled full of summer flowers.

Well, I guess it should have. The vase of fragrant oil with those wick sticks in it was overturned and laying on the floor. I told my husband that a mouse couldn’t have done that; it would have had to have been something bigger.

Then we noticed a hole eaten through the tough plastic lid on a can of pretzels, and then we saw the small, brown acorns I’d brought in last fall for decoration had been broken open and partially consumed.

We concluded that we had another chipmunk in the cottage. Last summer we had a chipmunk inside and decided he came in through an open patio door. This time we were stymied as to how he got in.

Nevertheless, it was our goal to get him out of our cottage. It wasn’t easy the first time, and it wouldn’t be easy this time.

Later, Kent went down to the basement to take a nap and I was sitting at my computer in the dining room when up the basement steps came the chipmunk. I let him get onto the first floor and then quickly shut the basement door, yelling for Kent to come help.

What ensued would have won the $10,000 weekly prize on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” had someone been there to record it. We have an aging, all-black cocker spaniel named Apollo. Apollo, Kent and I, also aging, were chasing that chipmunk down the hallway to the entry and back again. Chippie — we even named him — went into the living room, around the kitchen and under the chairs. We grabbed a broom thinking we could sweep him out the door if he came by at the right time. But, he got under the stove. When he finally came out, I plugged the space under the stove with a towel, or so I thought. That Chippie got back under the stove. As of this writing, he is still there, and the fight will continue until he is out of the house!

As I laid in bed thinking about that chipmunk in the house, I thought, he doesn’t want to be here either. This is not his home. We don’t have what he needs for food and water or family. That vase of sweet-smelling oil was on a window sill. He knocked it over probably because he was looking outside where his home is and was wondering in chipmunkeze, “How do I get out there?”

He probably got inside due to curiosity and then didn’t know the way out. And then, when the chase began with the dog in hot pursuit from one end of the cottage to the other, Chippie must have really been longing for home. And, I hope he gets there!

Longing for home is a strong emotion and motivator. Way back when I attended grade school in a country school (in the previous century!), I rode my all-white horse, Topsy, to school. When school was out, Topsy was bent on going home and there wasn’t much that was going to stop her.

All of us can’t wait to get away on vacation, but once it is over, the site of our home in the windshield is a pretty welcome site. Home is where the heart is.

Nostalgia is a longing for home. The theme of longing for home is prevalent in literature and movies. Our longing for justice, for mercy, for everything to be right and to just have peace and love among all peoples is the ultimate longing for being home in Heaven with God. He is preparing a place just like that for all who have believed on His son, Jesus Christ. What a joy to anticipate this all.

Charles H. Spurgeon, “the Prince of Preachers,” quoted from the Bible, “‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him; but He hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit,’ and, as far as we understand that revelation we are taught by it that we shall enter into a state of complete rest and perfect peace; a state of holy delight, and of serene and blissful activity; a state of perfect praise; a state of satisfaction; a state, probably, of progress, but still of completeness at every inch of the road; a state in which we shall be as happy as we are capable of being, every vessel, little or great, being filled to the brim. We shall be supremely blessed, for at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore.”

Heaven! I want to go there! I would want to go there as soon as possible if I knew every one of my beloved ones believed that Jesus died for their sins and they would be there, too. That’s all that holds me back.

So, until I die or until Jesus returns, I shall live in a foreign land like the little chipmunk, singing the old song, “This world is not my home, I’m just apassin’ through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue.”     

The uglies of this earth can chase me with broom in hand or like a dog and I will run and run, longing for home and peace with every step.