It is called “cleansing the palate.”  We reset our taste buds with a small ingestion of a neutral item.  I highly recommend raspberry sorbet.  I thought of the palate cleansing ritual this week in another setting.

Someday next year, Andi and I will be moving out of northern Kentucky to what God has next.  So, inexorably, we are beginning to climb that mountain.  I am off this week after a wonderful celebration of Andi’s birthday with our clan.  (Hocking Hills hiking is worthy!). Duty calls and we are rummaging through our collections of stuff.  Andi is much better than I am at the routine.  With impunity she can cast off with the best of them.  I am a measure sentimental and have emotional attachments to pieces of history in our shared lives as family.  Mounts Inc. got underway in 1982.  Now, I am no hoarder, but certainly am drawn to archiving the history that we have enjoyed so much together. 

I am in the process of noodling through a couple of boxes of artifacts and disaggregating what I must keep and what I could part with; haunted all the while with that cousin of Murphy who said, “You always need what you kept for years…and threw away…two days ago.  But, it is never needed until two days after it is gone.”  That witticism can mess up a good purging exercise that is prudent before moving. 

Yesterday, it was the documents…years of documents.  Papers which themselves tell stories of God’s kindness and mercy and provision; longitudinal studies that rebuke our tendency in the moment to worry, as God plays the long game and works it out for our good and His glory and His craft of forming us to be more like Jesus.  But, alas, in a very short period of time at a fire pit, you can resolve boxes of paper that have been archived. 

In a couple hours I “burned through” twenty years.  There is a fundamental incongruity to how little time lapsed in wiping out hard copy records of the years, and what those years meant in experience, labor, worry, prayer, faith, and, hopefully, obedience, repentance, and the experience of grace.  Night fell in the midst of the process.  Where formerly in the light I was re-scrutinizing every toss into the fire, after dark, only God knew what I was burning up.  I had checked it all once, but the sentimental often offer a second glance…just to be sure.

But I could feel something at work, a cleansing in my spirit-a palate cleansing of the soul.  The book of Ecclesiastes was incarnate around the fire.  “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  Ecclesiastes 1:2. The New Living Translation is rather more cryptic, “’Everything is meaningless.’ says the Teacher, ‘completely meaningless.’”  I had to begin to conclude that most all of what I burned up did not really matter.  The rebuke in the exercise was held in my appraisal of what mattered as I was passing through the events chronicled in the paperwork…that I was burning up.  I can get my axle all wrapped around things that one minute after I am gone won’t matter a bit.

I was pondering, as I am given to in these days before I finish my run as a Pastor to a local church (which will come March 8, 2027…a run of some forty-two years), how most of my life has passed.  I am on the cusp of a new season, and it is my last.  That thought is not easy to absorb, but is necessary for a fruitful life. 

As I am burning paper, I am hearing the first few lines from that old Steve Green song, “May All Who Come Behind Us Find Us Faithful.”  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKT5BCmvmq0)  I was considering that second verse, “After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone, and our children sift through all we have left behind…”.  Well kids, we are trying to make it a little easier.  Then, of course, each piece of paper is intertwined with people, people you come to love.  So, you throw in a passing thought of Michael W. Smith’s Friends lyrics (“Packing up the dreams God planted in the fertile soil of you. I can’t believe the hopes He’s granted Means a chapter of your life is through…) and suddenly you are a neurotic mess out there next to the fire pit.  But a sweet joyful savor ripples through the neurosis.  God has been so kind to us and generous.  The well spring of gratitude begins to cascade from your heart.

The cleansing-of-the-palate fire brought me more vividly and afresh to Hebrews 13:14 (again, the New Living Translation), “For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.” Hebrews 13:14.  “Here, we have no lasting city” (ESV). 

Ben Sasse is one of my heroes.  He is bright, articulate, and God’s favor has rested upon his life’s work, including a run in the United States Senate.  He is dying of pancreatic cancer.  He is a joyful and hopeful follower of Jesus.  He mentioned the blessing of the disease.  He said that it had put a dagger through the heart of his autonomy and the pursuits of his own “kingdom” and independence from God.  I suppose pancreatic cancer holds the potential of cleansing the palate too. 

A few years back, I was in touch with my professor at Cedarville as he was dying.  He marked my life as a student.  Back then, he was Mr. Grier.  As we would email back and forth, he would always close with the same postscript, “A pilgrim headed for the city.”  Of course, it is the vision of John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress. 

Andi and I stood on top of the bridge at Bedfordshire in England where John Bunyan was imprisoned (below) for twelve years for his faithfulness to our hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Bunyan saw it all so clearly.  After passing through the wicket gate and mounting Calvary, we tread inexorably…home.  The lighter the pack (fire pit palate cleansers are good) the easier the journey.  Nothing here is permanent.  Our home is with our Lord in eternity. 

So, my encouragement is to start the fire!  Let’s divest ourselves of all that would inhibit our trek home (Hebrews 12:1-2).  With a cleansed palate, we’ll keep in focus what is good, eternal, and lasting…and what is not.  New seasons are fine.  They come.  New and vivid tastes are renewed with a cleansed palate.  “O, taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Psalm 34:8

The road leads home

The road leads home

O, who can mind the journey

When the road leads home