DestinationIf you have kids, you probably remember their asking, "Are we there yet?" when you were traveling somewhere. In fact, if you're like me, you remember posing the same question to your own parents.
Are we there yet? That seems to be a common question in many of our lives, often even more important than where we're going. But maybe we need to slow down and consider our destination: Where are we going? And why? And what road will take us there and not someplace we didn't intend and don't really want to go. These questions have concerned me quite a bit in my life. In being a wife, mother, and grandmother. In writing. As a Christian. Where are you going, my friend? Will your destination meet your heart's desire? Are you going by a true road? And might we meet somewhere along the way? A SeaSon for the HeartFall 2024 Can they find their way home to the land, to the Lord—and to each other? May 1945. Germany has finally surrendered to the triumphant Allied forces, while in the South Pacific the war against Japan grinds toward a bloody end.
Ellie Hershberger is tired to death of her plain, nonresistant Mennonite lifestyle. Now that she's graduated from high school and World War II is almost at its end, she longs to be a part of the wider life she sees around her, unrestricted by the boundaries of her Mennonite church and the surrounding Amish and Mennonite community. Then suddenly all her dreams are shattered, and she's forced to question everything she thought she believed in. 
Instead of being baptized and joining the Mennonite church he grew up in, Judah Mast joined the Marines and ended up in the South Pacific. Now, wounded and battle-scarred, Jude is forced to return to the last place he ever wanted to be. Yet it's in that most unexpected of places, where he believes he'll never be accepted or forgiven, that he discovers a grace he never conceived of. During that endless, scorching summer, while the war rages toward its climax in the Pacific and the skies remain as hard and unyielding as iron, withering the crops in the fields, Ellie and Jude learn that just as there is a season for birth and death, for planting and harvest, for joy and sorrow, for hard won gain and bitter loss, so too, in God’s gracious time, there will come a season for the heart.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: . . . A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8 |
Traveling on a broken road? 
Jacob Hochstetler
Family Association
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