Marked by Faith, Hope, and Love

Fifteen days since we left, and now I sit in a hotel room at Madrid’s airport, weary after a day of travel, waiting to fly home tomorrow.  It has been a crusade; we have dwelt in many houses of our Lord.  We have traveled some 5000 plus kilometers and seen the width and depth of Spain and Portugal.  It is a garden of earthly delights; the whole is a bloom of wheat, crops, and orchards of every kind, rolling across every square inch of her.  Only her many mountains interrupt the abundance.  And there is one constant, thousands of homestead relics, dilapidated sentinels of a past filled with people of the land, stone Ebenezers declaring a rich history of farming peoples who took God at his Word and took dominative care of this land.  I often see abandoned homes and think about how ambitious the old souls were who had built them, now gone the way of all things, dust to dust.  We all leave some mark on the earth, and these have left a mark of hopeful planting, tilling, and bringing forth from the land.  Faith, hope, and love, this is way we leave Spain.  It has marked us!  From the Axor Hotel, Madrid Airport.  lee