“Moving Day” has all the initial appeal of “Income Tax Day,” “Root Canal Day,” or “Commitment Sunday.”  We should admire the people at Mayflower, because it’s honest to name your moving company after a long, miserable trip on which everyone got sick.

While a few of our boxes were accurately labeled “Towels, linens,” I was surprised to find boxes marked “miscellaneous,” “leftovers,” and “under the bed.”  Seven boxes of “Christmas stuff” seems excessive.

I am still wondering: “Where did we get all this stuff?  Why do we have a tripod?  Do we need high school annuals?  Is this our chair?”

But by the grace of God and the goodness of the people of Plymouth, moving day/week has been a gift.  We walked in the door to find two big, beautiful cards from the children welcoming us to Plymouth.  Good people came on Sunday and waited with us for the moving van that showed up nine hours late and took out several garbage cans on Hicks Street.  Saints spent their Memorial Day unpacking boxes.  They taught us how to bag recycling, critique every restaurant in Brooklyn, and, by the end of the day, sit on a stoop exhausted.

The parade of food has been amazing.  We recognize that most people do not know the joy of moving into a house where the refrigerator is filled.  People have been bringing meals and goodies.  New York Bagels are not over-rated.  Everything with Brooklyn in the name works—Chocolate Brooklyn Babka, Brooklyn Lager.  We are eating well.

Moving reminds me how wonderfully fortunate I am and how incredibly dependent we all are.  I depend on friends, family, and friends who become family.  The church is made up of those who recognize that they do not have the ability, need, or desire to make it on their own, because we are in this together.

Henri Nouwen said that he lived with the fantasy that every time he landed at an airport he would be met by someone he knew shouting, “Hey, Henri.”

Predictably, Nouwen knew a lot of disappointments.  Each time that he got off a plane and no familiar figure was there to meet him, Nouwen thought to himself: “It’s all right.  When I get home my friends will be there.”

Out of that consolation, Nouwen came to a wonderful conclusion about the nature of eternity: “Heaven is going to be like that.  God will be there and will say, ‘Hey, Henri, how was it?  Let’s see your pictures.’”

That’s how God’s people greet one another.  From the moment we arrived, friends have been shouting: “Hey, Brett.  Come on in.  Welcome home.”