{"id":3320,"date":"2023-04-22T20:19:48","date_gmt":"2023-04-23T01:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/?p=3320"},"modified":"2023-04-22T20:19:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-23T01:19:48","slug":"being-home-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/2023\/04\/being-home-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Home Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1940, Thomas Wolfe wrote a book entitled, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Go Home Again.\u201d He was both correct and incorrect.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>My first full-time ministry assignment was as the Director of Baptist student ministries and instructor of Bible at Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>For six wonderful years our home was the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas. Now, fifty years later, I am making monthly trips there to teach more than one hundred pastors and church leaders as a part of the Valley Baptist Missions Education Center. Every time I go, it feels like going home again. In many ways, it is still the same warm, beautiful, friendly, Valley that we once knew. However, in many other ways, it is not the same.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Or maybe, after traveling and ministering in all fifty states, every Canadian province, and fifty-nine countries of the world, the Rio Grande Valley just looks different. But the campus where I served, now called U.T. Rio Grande Valley, is much larger and complex.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>The Center that housed my office, is now gone and replaced with a larger, better located center.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>The apartments where we first lived have been renovated several times.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>The house where we lived, and to which we brought home our first-born child, is dilapidated, and worn.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>And by the way, the hospital where she was born is not longer there.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Our favorite mom-and-pop cafes, where we ate genuine Mexican food, have all been replaced by large, bright, chain-restaurants. Trips for lunch\/dinner across the Mexican border, without need of Passport or I.D., now face long lines, intense security, and dangerous circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>A few friends remain, but most have moved north. Many of the churches where I preached, are not any where near what they used to be, and I could elaborate. After being invited into the home of Mary and Martha, \u201cJesus and his disciples were on their way . . .\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>came to a village where a woman named\u00a0Martha<\/span><\/a>\u00a0opened her home to him. She had a sister called\u00a0Mary<\/span><\/a>\u201d (Luke 10:38). He seemed to return there often. I wonder if he thought he was \u201cgoing home again\u201d?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Mr. Wolfe, you are both right and wrong. Long before your time, a naval commander, Gaius Plinius Secundus, known to historians as Pliny the Elder (a.d. 23-79), said, \u201cHome is where the heart is\u201d and at least a part of my heart will forever be in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1940, Thomas Wolfe wrote a book entitled, \u201cYou Can\u2019t Go Home Again.\u201d He was both correct and incorrect.\u00a0\u00a0My first full-time ministry assignment was as the Director of Baptist student ministries and instructor of Bible at Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas.\u00a0\u00a0For six wonderful years our home was the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3321,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3320\/revisions\/3321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}