Not at Home

I had the pleasure/displeasure of a work trip to Hamilton, Ontario earlier this week. I really don’t mind traveling, in fact I enjoy it. What I don’t like is traveling to Canada, in January. I really wish Puerto Rico had a booming steel industry.

Being in another country is strange, especially when it's one as similar to my own.  There is this continual feeling that you are not at home. Sometimes you barely notice that you're not in the US anymore, somehow it's just not the same. Simple things that remind you that you're not at home. The street signs are a different color, and in a different font. The road lines are painted slightly different, and of course the prolific use of metric (which confused me at first, when I turned on the weather channel in the hotel, and they informed me the high temperature for tomorrow was -2°) It's not anything that I wouldn’t get used to, but you're constantly reminded that home is several hundred miles away, and the only thing that can get you back is the little blue book in your pocket with the gold embossed eagle.

But I had a job to do, responsibility to fulfill. And although I wanted to pick up and head home when I was tired, I couldn't, because I knew I had to stay until my job was done. I could have told the customer, "I'm sorry, I can't stay a minute longer", and they would have smiled, shook my hand, and let me leave. But I still wouldn’t have fulfilled what was asked of me. I needed to stay until the job was done, and I wasn’t sure how long that would take.

Eventually I finished my work and drove home. That’s the end to my story, but not really, because by now I hope you have realized that I'm not talking about working at a steel plant in Ontario.

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV