Conservatively speaking, I have gotten boat gas at Johnson’s Ranch at least 300 times over the last 50 years. Whether being cradled in my mother’s arms while my grandfather paid…or being the one who pays as my sons ask if they can get a snickers bar.
Johnson’s Ranch is on Caddo Lake and the “oldest inland marina (and most expensive gas) in the great State of Texas.” It was established in 1908 and has not gone through a renovation since 1908.
I can navigate a boat into their slip, hop out, get a dr pepper from the coffin, grab a moon pie, pet the dog, ask the old timers fishing if anyone is “doing any good?”, pay in cash, tip the guy filling my boat, and get back in the boat ALL while blindfolded.
Its warm, inviting, secure, constant, safe, enduring. Its home, or at least what we all yearn for home to feel like. Where the light is always on.
We always want to be home, surrounded in the security of warm, inviting, secure, constant, safe, enduring love. But we often obscure this deep longing of our heart by filling it with lesser things, people, and places…places like Johnsons Ranch.
In McMinn’s book Finding Our Way Home he writes that “In heaven what we want and what we will have will be perfectly aligned.” But in this broken world the alignment is never quite right. Never quite in focus.
Quite often my security of “home” is limited to distant memories of my childhood home, grandparents home, Caddo (Johnsons Ranch), our current home, and more specifically…people. But if this is my ultimate desire for home then its faint and disappointing. My heart seeks home desperately…but my understanding of it is pale and weak compared to what I will know one day with my Lord.
“Earthly dissatisfaction is the road to heavenly satisfaction. We are aliens in a foreign land. Heaven is our home.” – Kreeft
Thanks to Johnsons Ranch for reminding me that this is good…but not even close to being as good as it gets.
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