Many of us have a happy place. It's usually inviting and comfortable, maybe even cozy. We go there to remember good things, good people, and good memories.
Until last week, Missoula, Montana was my happy place. I lived there for a year from 2013-2014 and fell positively in love. The sight of mountains still leaves me teary. I feel closer to God and closer to the best version of myself when I'm in the mountains. In Missoula, I attended a fantastic church and became a part of a community committed to doing radical things for the Gospel. I found a new piece of myself there and when I left for grad school in Texas, I think I left it in that valley. Last week I returned to this happy place and it looked almost completely different. The Hip Strip downtown was missing some of my favorite stores and the Zootown coffee shop had been remodeled. I didn't know anyone there. My happy place had moved on without me. And in some ways, I had moved on too. A lot has happened in the last year and a half and while the version of myself I left in Missoula was still me, I was afraid that maybe it was only a part of me I had lost and couldn't get back.
Then, as every Thursday around 6:00, the coffee shop transformed into a worship service and Kyle Smith delivered the Gospel to a crowd of eager Missoulians. Hearing him speak, I hung on every word, sat on the edge of my seat and realized, "Nope, it's still the same. Nothing's actually changed."
It's never been so real to me that we are created for relationships. And as a result, our happy places, the places we go when we need to return and remember a better version of ourselves and our reality, are not actually places at all. They're people. They're mentors, friends and family. Missoula itself is not my happy place, it's the people and heart of Zootown Church that carries the pieces of my heart I want to hold on to.
When Jacob dreamed of the ladder to heaven and received his covenant promise from God in Genesis 28, he set up a pillar to remember the spot so that later in chapter 35 when he was in a tough situation, he could go back and remember what God had done there. But even then, his hope was not in the place, it was in the person he encountered there. Granted, Jacob probably found hope in the memory triggered by seeing the pillar he had set up, but how much more hope did he find when God spoke to him? Notice in the beginning of Chapter 35 that it is God's voice, His reminder of His faithfulness, and His command to Jacob to go to Bethel that causes Jacob to cleanse his household of foreign gods, not the actual arrival at Bethel. In this story of Jacob, we can see that it is not revisiting happy places that necessarily ushers in hope, but rather the encounter with the ones we shared that happy place with. In other words, Jacob already has hope even before he gets to his happy place because he is reunited with the One who made it happy in the first place.
For me, Missoula changed. Store fronts evolved and the coffee shop replaced their comfy couches. But the people who touched my life there were still there and I could reach out to them at any time. But what do we do when the people who have touched our lives do change? When the hope we placed in a person is shattered by betrayal? When we text them and they don't respond or better yet, reveal an entirely different character? Well, there's always Jesus. Because just like Jacob, sometimes we have to go back to the places where we were afraid, uncertain and running scared to remember that that is where we encountered God, that He's the only person in the universe who gave us true peace, and that He doesn't change how He feels about us along the way.
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