By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer
I read across genres, enjoying contemporary suspense, historical romance, adventure, fantasy, and others. Recently, an early title by American author Louis L’Amour took me back to the days of the Old West – Hondo, a classic Western, published in 1953.
Regardless of the genre you prefer to read, if you pick up a copy of Hondo, you’ll find L’Amour a skilled word-wrangler, painting a picture of lands and times and people long gone.
Well, the land is still there, and that fact is an author’s device I like to employ myself – the setting as a character in the story with its attending climate, challenges, and threats.
In this book, I learned two things from my L’Amour-guided evening jaunts into the American southwest. The first concept was the tendency of those who are cowardly to try to destroy those who are not. An interesting idea to ponder.
But the more important observation I picked up was the desire of most people – men and women alike – to belong.
A note in my journal reads:
What I learned from Hondo Lane:
A man and a woman want a place to belong and a person to belong to.
The note continues:
“I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there you may be also.” -Jesus
The old-West tale shed new light on a familiar scripture, allowing me to see it from the other side of the mirror if you will.
Jesus said He was preparing a place specifically for us, a place we can belong. And a place where He will be.
He could have left off that last part, “…that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:3). But He didn’t.
Just as there are no superfluous, unnecessary words in a good story, I believe there are no superfluous, unnecessary words in God’s book. Each one is there on purpose.
God loves us enough to know what we need – a place to belong and a Person to belong to.
I’m so glad.
~
*By the way, if you’re interested in the story, Hondo, don’t settle for the movie version with John Wayne as Hondo Lane. No comparison at all. Get the book.
A place to belong and a person to belong to. Click To Tweet
As Sophie took down the bread bowl, her thoughts fell on her mother and brother. Praying while she stirred up a batch of biscuits was becoming a regular habit. She lifted her family by name, asking that they be kept safe, as well as Mae Ann and the baby. Cade and Deacon. The Eisners.
And the mare—that she’d made it home. Poor thing, her world was not right unless she was in her own barn with its familiar sounds and smells.
Oddly enough, Sophie didn’t feel that way about the farm any longer. In spite of loving her family, the place wasn’t quite home, for a certain someone with whom she’d like to make a home of her own wasn’t there. ~An Impossible Price
Inspirational Western Romance – where the hero is heroic.
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(c) 2020 Davalynn Spencer, all rights reserved.
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Good morning. This is a wonderful post. I love this verse, and am so glad about the second part of it. I am really glad that God knows/cares about my needs and wants. Hondo – I agree with you about the book and the movie. Though I do love a good John Wayne. Two of my favorites is “McClintock” and “The Cowboys”
Yes, Lori. Our Lord knows exactly what we need. (And I loved The Cowboys!) Thanks for reading.
Hi Davalynn, I always enjoy reading your posts. When Roger died, I lost the person I “belonged to.” But I soon learned that God really is the One I belong to. I always thought I knew Him and loved Him, but as the months rolled on, I really began to know Him and experience and feel the truth that He is my husband now! This relationship grows better every day!
What a beautiful and life-changing outlook. Thank you for sharing, Phyllis.
Ohhh, this is SO TRUE!!! Belonging is almost as important to life as air and water. When we once belonged, and that’s torn away from us, the pain is incredible. It’s a time of mourning, of tears and heartache.
Then God whispers that we still, and always, have belonged to Him, and the healing commences.
Thank you, Davalynn.
Amen, and amen. Jennifer. We can entrust our pain to Him.