There we were together on the sidewalk this past Saturday at Southgate. I went to the west end to catch a glimpse of the bus returning. It was carrying the 30 members of the HHD 237th FSB Forward 2 from the Ohio Army National Guard who deployed fifteen months ago in July of 2006 being mustered out from Springfield. They were home and just about to meet their families. I wanted to go over and see them come up the boulevard with the escort of a cadre of Vietnam veterans who picked them up on motorcycles when they came into Ohio from Indiana. As they rolled in I found myself standing next to him.

He was a little man whose Dad had been gone...for a long time. When you are ten years old, fourteen months is equivalent to five and a half years of your life at fifty. Now he could no longer contain the wait. It was when he started to whimper that he pulled me in. I noticed him. He could not hold it in. He began to jump up and down holding up his sign ("Welcome Home Dad!"). He was crying and jumping, trying to yell and chop-crying at the same time. He was exploding right next to me. As the crowd of one hundred and fifty plus received the men and women returning from their service in Mosul, Iraq, the little man disappeared in a sea of people coming near the throng mustering around the bus door. The wait was over. Dad was home. What a happy day!

It was such a privilege for our church to host the event. The guard had contacted us about receiving the men and women as they met their families. It was a rather elaborate ceremony in several phases. After thirty minutes of hugs and kisses, they marched in with some good Scottish fare with bagpipes a blaring. Then the VIP's spoke. Congressman David Hobson made his way forward to welcome them along with the upper tier of officers in the Ohio Army Guard. Mayor Copeland was here, Governor Strickland's emissary as well as Senator Voinivich's dispatch. Then a break was followed by a range of cool gifts given to each soldier. Among the gifts from the United States Army was also a package we added from our church for each soldier. We gave them a new Bible, a DVD called "Hope" which winsomely explains the gospel and a $25 gift card from Cracker Barrel. I am grateful to serve at a place that is willing to extend our ministry and has the latitude to do that because faithful givers sustain this work yearning for Christ to be known.

What a happy event! Not all my events are happy...that one sure was. Hugs and kisses and tears and smiles and pats on the back and awards and ceremony and dignitaries and families...happy to be back together. I'll most remember that little boy's joy.

I also thought about our pending reception in heaven when "our bus rolls in". Vance Havner (an old North Carolina Mountain preacher now gone) used to tell the story of traveling in ministry as young man and returning home by rail to be received at the station by his father with his standard query. "Well, how'd you get along?" Some day our labors will be over. The anxiety and stress of life in this broken world will abate. For everyone who has savingly believed in Christ, that last bit of consciousness here will give way to the ushering that will land us in the very presence of the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. The journey will be over. Our deeds here all completed.

I thought about how those returning soldiers must have felt on the bus. Finally home! The deeds called upon to be accomplished all finished. The 237th vetted Iraqis for employment and services taking finger prints and doing interviews and taking pictures and issuing ID's. They ran some forty eight hundred through the process mill in their stint and issued nearly eight-thousand badges. Among their sixty nine referrals for counter-intelligence leads was a hit on a finger print from an IED on a person they were vetting. That dude did not hang around long. The State department gobbled him right up. But now, their work was done. It was over. It was time to get off of the bus. Our time will come too. There will be a reception on that day...a day that my aunt and uncle used to rehearse with an old gospel song called "Glad Reunion Day". How proud those soldiers were of their service! They were done and walked off the bus...at home. For followers of Jesus, our bus will pull in someday...into the grandest of central stations. Yes, and we'll step off...home forever.

When a hard day comes along and I have to hack my way machete-like through it, I think of that song, "It will be worth it all, when we see Jesus". If we can just push through the hard days, the bus will pull in all too soon enough and we'll lament that we have no further opportunities to invest in the work before we had been received at home.

"One glimpse of his dear face,
All sorrow will erase
So bravely run the race
Till we see God!"

Let's all keep going! As Spurgeon used to say, "A few more stormy days at most, shall land me on fair Canaan's coast." "It will be worth it all, when we see Christ!"