Tunisia. It sounds exotic and remote. The graduate student holding a rolled-up poster tucked next to him looked to be in his early twenties. We were sitting in the same row on our flight from Chicago to Frankfort. I couldn’t place his accent.
“I’m from Tunisia, he said, “a very small country. Hey, we all get along and have no problems with one another.”
The East Indian Hindu next to me was silent and I could only wonder if it were possible that a country exists where there is no conflict. The Tunisian also wanted to know if I was open to understanding his culture or like other Americans he’d met, was I secure in my “USA, All the Way” mentality.
I listened. How proud he was that he had just come from giving a seminar in Minneapolis. He had created a posterfor that presentation which illustrated some concept of computerese that was beyond me. He was just starting his career and after five months in America he was looking forward to going home.
There wasn’t time for much conversation. He was sitting two seats away but I could see
he wanted to talk more. Other than that he speaks Italian, his local language, French and English, I didn’t learn much more about him or his country.
I wonder how he feels now that he is back home. I’m home, too. So is the Hindu.
My companions on this flight were all going home. Home to friends and family. Home to their wives’ familiar cooking and to the embraces of their children. Home to the sounds of neighbors chattering on their way to work, to kids playing and calling to one another, home to trees and flowers or sand and hills –whatever they remembered as home.
Our Father has placed in our souls a restlessness, a yearning for home and a sense of deep satisfaction when we arrive there.
Someday, my travelling and yours will cease and we all will be home. We will know one another as our Father knows us. The mystery which each of us is hides us within. In our eternal home, our journeys completed, each of will know God and one another as He knows us. Home at last.