Get thee out of thy country, and
from thy kindred, and from thy father's house
Gen 12:1 (KJV)
Abraham gave up the ghost…and was
gathered to his people.
Gen 25:8 (KJV)
After all communion we dwell upon islands,
dotted over a great archipelago, each upon his little rock with the sea dashing
between us; but the time comes when, if our hearts are set upon that great Lord
whose presence makes us one, there shall be no more sea and all the isolated
rocks shall be parts of a great continent . . . If we cultivate that sense of
detachment from the present and of having our true affinities in the unseen, if
we dwell here as strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then death
will not drag us away from our associates nor hunt us into a lonely land, but
will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the “sweet societies” together, and
the sheep shall couch close by one another because all gathered round the one
Shepherd. Then many a tie shall be re-woven, and the solitary wanderer meet
again the dear one whom he had “loved long singe and lost awhile.” –Alex.
McLaren
