and the lakes have it!

If you seek a pleasant peninsula... come to visit me, because I'm back in Michigan!

As frequently as I've thought that Michigan is a boring state to live in, I realize now that I'd never lived somewhere less diverse and exciting. Michigan really is a super place to live... the lakes on their own are a superior quality (no pun intended). I love that a few minutes' drive brings me to something so completely beyond my power and comprehension, so entirely wrought by God Himself, and also so perfectly controlled and regulated by Him as to be maintained and enjoyed, but also remain unpredictable by us humans.

I love how the lakes are God's wonderful provision for us--they are a source of recreation, food, water, pleasure, employment.... I love how when I think of HOME(s), that's one of the first things that comes to mind.

By the water's edge is a favorite place to meet with God, and (at last!) I can do so once again without the smell of sewage at the nearby water treatment plant (for those of you who don't know, I lived down by the Wabash River in Lafayette very near to that smelly place)!

There is such comfort of knowing a place well, of owning it or having it internalized in you, and I feel like this whole state provides that kind of sweet familiarity for me. Regardless of where within it I may be, I feel like I'm home.

I've recently been studying in the Bible about the inheritance laws and provision for the land God implemented in the Law, and I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of why the nation of Israel is so bound to their land. They have been led there by God Himself, and commanded not to ever sell it permanently, to redeem it for their relatives who have fallen upon hard times, to care for it because it belongs to the Lord.

This land is their only home, Jews are sojourners in foreign lands when they're anywhere else. Somehow, on a small level, I relate to them in this understanding of home--Michigan, My Michigan.