Location!  Location!  Location!

  That’s the old real estate axiom we all know so well.  It’s the reason roughly approximate houses sell for vastly different amounts.  Real estate agents know this rule so they’re always pitching the value of their particular location to potential buyers.  Natalie and I for years watched this show on HGTV called, House Hunters.  It never ceased to amaze me just how little house you could buy in those large metropolitan areas like New York or San Francisco.  It just went to prove the adage, location, location, location! 

  What makes one place any more valuable than another I wonder?  Have you ever thought about that?  Sure, some spots are closer to work or come with great views but does that truly make them more valuable?

  Chances are the reason people shell out so much more for location isn’t really for ease of commute or proximity to beaches.  It’s something deeper, I think.  I think the reason “location, location, location” is the ultimate rule of real estate is there are just some places where you imagine yourself being happier, just in being there.  As in if I can just live in New York City or Figure 8 Island or even Myers Park, then somehow, in some odd, inexplicable way, I won’t just be me…I’ll be a better version of me. 

  It doesn’t always work out, does it?  Most of the time we arrive at wherever it is we assumed would make us different only to discover it’s just the same ole’ us just in another place.  If we move to the beach, we’ll get a deeper tan but we won’t really be changed.  Perhaps if we move to the big city, we’ll get a taste for Laotian food which’d be hard to come by elsewhere, but we won’t be appreciably better for it.  Every once in a while, though, it works though.  You get to a new location and you are different.  Better even.  It does, I promise you.  But I think it only happens when you get to the right place…the place God wants you to be. 

  I spent the better part of 25 years living in Southeast Charlotte North Carolina.  When the Lord called me into His ministry, I was excited to be located in Mount Holly, right on Charlotte’s border.  If you’d asked me the first day of my job here what the best thing about the church was other than the wonderful people, I’d likely have said, that the best thing was its location.  I would’ve told you that living in Mount Holly/Shuffletown area is just like living in Charlotte and I liked Charlotte.  My opinion would change over time.   

  I think those of us who’ve lived in both places would agree that even though they’re close to one another, the two towns couldn’t be more different.  Charlotte is a sprawling metropolis, Mount Holly/Shuffletown, on the other hand, still exudes a small-town charm and a far less frenetic pace.  One of the great things about Cook’s is that it is like a little part of Shuffletown still exists right here at this church.  Y’all I don’t think I realized how my outlook had changed until recently.  After over a decade of living here in Mount Holly, I found myself back in Southeast Charlotte one afternoon last week and was amazed by what I felt.  I felt completely out of place.  Like I was a stranger there.  Truth be told, I didn’t like Southeast Charlotte half as much as I once did.  I wanted to be back home, back here in Mount Holly/Shuffletown.  Sure, there are some things here that didn’t make sense to me to begin with.  There’s the man who rides his lawnmower, twice a day up and down Tuckaseegee Road.  God bless Mr. John Deer and his neon orange caution sign.  Goodness knows where he’s going but, I promise you this, he’s going to go there every single day.  He’s constant, just like the tides. 

  When I got here, I had to get used to shopping at the Food Lion instead of the Harris-Teeter.  I learned to prefer the taste of a Johnny Bruscos’ pizza far beyond pies from the Mellow Mushroom.   Instead of the Charlotte farmer’s market, bustling with strangers and noise, I go to our own, a more personal place where I know the names of most of the folks.  Heck, I even got to judge cornbread a few years ago.   

  And you know what, once you really get to the right location, it claims you as its own.  And in the end, it alters you… it changes you for the better.  It makes you miss it like the dickens when you’re gone and makes you thankful to God for getting you back there when you’ve returned from a trip away.  It really is all about location, location, location… but only when it’s the right location.

  Today, even though most of us won’t even leave our pews, we’ll arrive at the best spot in all the world.  The bread will be broken, the juice will be poured.  The elements passed on those sparkling silver platters the Worship Committee’s kept polished through their recent hiatus.  It won’t feel like we’ve moved at all….and yet we have.  We’ve arrived at the banquet table of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We come to this table and the feast provided is shared with us freely out of God’s Amazing and inexplicable Grace.  We’re invited to come to this table not because we’ve earned it, but only because we need it.  And, believe me, it’s the best deal in town.  You come hungry and you’re just given the most nourishing food in the entire world.  Spiritual food.  Grace in the form of bread and juice.  And we aren’t left to eat alone.  We come with others, also needy, also hungry.  This isn’t a solo feast.  I wonder sometimes if there’s anything more temporarily depressing than eating alone. 

  I’ve quaffed down entire meals in my car because I didn’t want to eat at a restaurant all by myself.  It’s like you’re in a bubble.  You see other people but you can’t look at them, not for long at least.  You overhear their conversations but can’t engage in them.  It’s a detached feeling, isn’t it?  Like the world around you is just passing you by, unaware of your existence.