You do well if you pay attention to this as you would to a light shining in a murky place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

(2 Peter 1:19, NET)

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Papa, are we there yet?”

It had been a long, cold trip. The boy’s brother and sister were asleep in the back of the wagon. His mother lay beside them, listening, peeking out from under her blankets to see her oldest son and her husband sitting side by side, talking in the dark. Their whispers hung frosted in the air.

“We have a few more hours to go, son.”

“Tell me the story again, Papa. Please?”

The woman’s husband rubbed his eyes and looked out over the dry scrub brush that dotted the slow-moving landscape. “Why don’t we play a game
instead?”

“Like ‘Name the Stars’?”

“Sure, ‘Name the Stars’ it is. You go first.”

The boy’s mother marveled at the names her young son dreamed up for the constellations. Her husband would correct the boy when he got one of them

wrong, but her son would smile and say, “That’s what I like to call them.” He had a mind of his own, no denying that. She had known that from day one. He had his own way about him.

She watched her son as he searched out the stars—not discovering them so much as he seemed to be recognizing them. She saw him look over at her husband and smile. “So, Papa, are we there yet?” But it didn’t seem like a question. The desert stretched out before them toward the eastern horizon and the morning star. The dad put his arm around the boy and pulled him close. He said something softly. And the son whispered something in his ear. The mom couldn’t hear, but it made her smile. Of course they were there—because wherever Jesus was, there was home.