This part of North Carolina can be hot...and it can be humid. But while it lacks the mountains and the sea, it can be beautiful. I have been cycling around (surprise!), trying to get ready for my cycle adventure in Europe which begins the 24th of this month. I walked into a local cycle shop and asked where people ride around here, and I was directed to several routes. In trying them out I have found myself on relatively small rural roads, going past fields of corn and tobacco, and around small lakes.
When I think about whether or not I like North Carolina, or whether or not if Nancy and I end up settling here ourselves it will be a happy place to be, I honestly turn the question around. While place is important, I believe that the thing that makes any place the place to be, and to flourish in, and to appreciate, is that we have the conviction that God has led us there. The most beautiful place on earth would be the wrong place if it were not where God was leading, and the most plain would be the right place if it is in God's will.
As I stood on the crest of Mt. Nebo in Jordan just a couple months ago, I was struck by a strange thought. I looked over to the Promised Land, with the same panorama in front of me that Moses was allowed to see before he died (without entering that land). And my thought was What a disappointment this must have been! It might have looked better than the desert where he had wandered for 40 years, but compared to much of the rest of the world it was dry, barren, and uninviting. But it was the place God had prepared for his people, and for them that made it good. It was not good because of the goodness of the land, rather it came from its identity as home for them.
The point is simply that if we look for the perfect place to live we will never find it. But if we look for that place God has called us to live and serve, it will be perfect.
When God evicted Adam and Eve from the most perfect place of all, the Garden of Eden, he did them a favor. To have continued to live in that perfect place would have been deadly for them. They needed a new place, a right place. And it was right not because it was prettier or cleaner than Eden, but because it was now the place God had for them. The question of where to live is not answered by climate, comfort, or mountains and sea, but by where God has called--what place he has given specifically to us to serve, live, and praise in.
Oh, yes, and all is very well with Colette, Emily and Steve.