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Chip Shots from the Ruff of Life
by Tom Kelley
It's late morning for me to be doing this. Usually I am up around 4:30 A.M. EST and at the computer around 4:50 preparing to submit this column. Right now it is almost 7:30 A.M. I am late doing this and I apologize. However, I do have a valid reason. My son has come home.
My oldest son, John, is in the youth ministry in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He drove down yesterday, having left after a meeting following their morning worship service. He arrived here sometime around 10:30 last night. That's a half hour after my usual bedtime for Sunday. His mother went on the bed and John and I sat up and talked a little and watched a movie. I kept drifting off. When we hit the sack it was closing in on 1:00 A.M.
After going to bed I laid there and reflected on something my wife said to John. "Welcome home." John had always said that the other places we had lived didn't seem to be home to him. They weren't our homes in the sense of us owning them. They were either parsonages or rental properties. I am hoping, as is my wife, that this will feel like home for our children. We want them to feel that sense of permanence and belonging.
While our concern is one of making our children feel at ease about where their parents live, we usnderstand that this is not truly our home. We are merely pilgrims passing through this life headed to the call of the last trumpet. While we live here on this world we strive not to be of this world. For we are of Christ and Christ is of God.
"For we know that if this earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality might be swallowed up by life." 2 Corinthians 5:1-4 When that happens, good friends, we will be home.
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...He was the Minister of the Minorsville Christian Church located near Stamping Ground, KY.
...Becky and Tom have three children; John, single and in worship ministry in Nicholasville, Kentucky; Sean, married (Jennifer, elementary school teacher) with twins (Grace and Patrick, b.d. 10/31/04) and regional director of Papa John's Pizza in Central KY; Kara, married (Vince Taylor, prison guard) and working with Hospice East in Winchester, KY.
...Tom went to be with the Lord on November 13, 2009 after a lengthy battle with cancer. If you have been touched by Tom's writings please send an email to Tom's son at jkelley@catalystchristian.net
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