Homecoming
It is Homecoming Weekend.
I could have gone to my twentieth college reunion. I thought the family might trek down to our oldest son's college and take in the festivities there.
Instead, I find myself sitting with my nineteen-year-old on a park bench by a pond near one of my favorite coffeehouses. While the changed leaves drift from branches and skitter along the path, we chat.
So, looking back, we did well to home school you?
I'm more prepared than most of the guys I know.
He reveals new perspectives from those years like rings on a crosscut-stump. We discuss the reason we transplanted ourselves from the public school playground to our own backyard, the thin drought years when we almost gave up, the thick saturated times of learning that sustained us.
No longer an acorn or swaying sapling, this solid oak tells about discussing politics and religion with his college friends. When he expressed his not-condone-but-neither-condemn belief, one said, Finally, a Christian who gets it! That's why I like you.
I'm just doing what I've done since I was six, he says to me.
I remember planting that seed his kindergarten year--You don't have to be best friends with everyone, but you do need to be kind to everyone. It is good he reminds me. I realize I have forgotten my own words of wisdom recently.
On this Homecoming Weekend, I see how his branches still intertwine with mine, yet reach and spread to make his own patch of shade. My bark is a bit craggier than his, but the pattern matches. He remains rooted, here and there, right where he belongs.
Listen to advice and accept discipline, and at the end you will be counted among the wise. Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.