miranda lambert and the israelites

her new single has slipped all the way down to #6 on the country music charts. i guess she held steady at #1 for a few weeks there. and i can see why. it's a catchy, sweet song. and it pulls on those old heartstrings. what more could you ask for? i hear it in the car and start humming it while doing the dishes or washing judah's hair. but i resisted it for awhile. you know why? because it doesn't apply to me. oh, it's as american as songs can get, but it's not for me. we (americans, that is) like nostalgia. we like the heartland. we like going home (although it's been rumored that's not possible).


and july? well, that's like america's Christmas, you know? we break out flags, eat fried chicken and apple pie, and start talking baseball. and it's funny to me. because if those things were really that important, that integral, they wouldn't only happen in july. we'd hoist old glory every day of the year, if we truly loved her. we'd make time to eat dinners around a dining room (kitchen?) table, if it were truly important. right?

but like i said, that doesn't apply to me. and i'll tell you why. first of all it doesn't apply because my "home" is not a house. oh sure, i remember once going back to our childhood home and listening to the cupboards creak open and enjoying that sound. i enjoyed checking out our old tree house and reminiscing about all the sleepovers we had up there. that was a good time. but it didn't define me. and i certainly didn't need to go back and "touch" that place in order to "find myself." because that house (mobile home) isn't who i am. my family is who i am. and my Jesus.

so then my mind goes to abraham. who was he? what do i know of abraham? he was extremely wealthy. he was old. he had a barren wife. whom he passed off as his sister TWICE out of fear. and he was the first israelite. well, kinda. because they weren't called that then. mainly because israel was abraham's grandson. he was chosen. the Lord God chose this man abraham (abram) out of the whole earth's population and claimed him for Himself. God basically said, "you are Mine." and from this one man, the Lord started a nation. a nation that hadn't existed before. a people set apart as God's own people. although He created everybody, israel was special. israel is His.

God told abraham to leave his home. again, i think it's funny. we often use the same phrase as miranda does in her song, "you don't know me from adam." abraham didn't know this God who called him and ordered him to leave his home, from adam. but he believed, he trusted and he followed. hebrews tells us that "by faith abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. by faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country . . ." (hebrews 11: 8,9).

i think what i'm getting at is that we should not be nailed down, so to speak, and defined by a place or a building. our home is not who we are. our country, our land, or the empires we've built in this world. these things should not define us. our home is wherever the Lord has us. our home is the body of Christ. our home will one day be, and is already, in Heaven.

i'm not going to stop listening to this song. it's not harming me, it's just not applying to me either. because i'm not taking steps backward to figure out my life. i'm pressing on. i'm reaching up. i'm waiting on the Lord. in Him i will find my peace and my worth. and in His body (the "you and i") of the present time.