“If you yourself do not cut the lines that tie you to the dock, God will have to use a storm to sever them and to send you out to sea.  Put everything in your life afloat upon God, going out to sea on the great swelling tide of His purpose, and your eyes will be opened.  If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in the calm waters just inside the harbor, full of joy, but always tied to the dock.  You have to get out past the harbor into the great depths of God, and begin to know things for yourself –begin to have spiritual discernment.” 

                           Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

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Recently reminiscing on where I had been over the years on the 4^th of July, the list became a telling commentary of my peripatetic journey:  Sampson AFB, New York; March AFB, California; Sondrestrom, Greenland; Maxwell AFB, Alabama; Columbus, Ohio; Clovis, New Mexico; Arlington, Virginia; Lake Tajoe, California; Wakkanai, Japan; Wiesbaden, Germany; Incirlik, Turkey; Paris, France; Little Rock, Arkansas; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Agana, Guam; Llongwe, Malawai; Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania; Vladivostok, Russia; and Arbreux, my place in the woods at the foot of the Alleghenies ….these, among many others, where I have celebrated the birth of our nation.  My memories swim with the faces and voices of American and international friends with whom I have enjoyed those special places and meaningful times.  To have been a grateful heir of all who have paid the price for my freedom humbles me, but this quote from an unknown source humbles me more:  “But there’s another country I’ve heard of long ago, most dear to them that love, most great to them that know, We may not count her armies, we may not see her King. Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering. And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase. And her ways are ways of freedom and all her paths are peace.” 

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So when we sing, "Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord," we are not thinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a more perfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts. -A. W. Tozer

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“The God of music, of painting, of mountains and oceans, the God of history working in time toward Christianity; this God is the God of little children, because He alone can be, with childlike abandon, perfectly simple….for it is His childlikeness that makes Him our God and Father. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God and say to Him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”  George MacDonald, The Child in the Midst