Where Everybody Knows Your Name

Makin' your way in the world today
Takes everything you've got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn't you like to get away?

Sometimes you wanna go
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You wanna be where you can see
The people are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows your name

Be glad there's one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name
And they're always glad you came
You wanna go where people know
The people are all the same
You wanna go where everybody knows your name

The TV was on earlier today. I'd been watching some random show, it got over, I got up and started working around the house, but left the TV on...a few minutes later this familiar song came floating through the air. Cheers was the first show I ever remember being allowed to stay up and watch. It started at 9:00PM, which was normally bed time. The theme song, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo, has been running through my head all day. From the first few moments after that opening phrase made it to my ears, I've been thinking about how the desire to just be accepted, to find someplace where people just enjoy letting us be us, is so strong. Why did God make us that way? Do we do enough, as Christians, to reach out to each other in a way that makes the rest of the world want to find what we have, or what we're supposed to have?

On my walk tonight, Homesick, by MercyMe, played about 2/3 of the way through my walk. It immediately turned my thoughts back to that desire, the desire to find a place where we "belong." It's another one of the group's great songs addressing the grief that we all will experience in some way, shape, or form over the course of our lives. But tonight it was more than that for me. It was a look into the desire for acceptance. Where do most of us feel accepted? Home. Even those who may not have had the best of childhoods typically have some place they call "home," some place where they know they can just be themselves without worrying about impressing people or being judged for their failings, great and small.

I close my eyes and I see your face
If home's where my heart is then I'm out of place
Lord, won't you give me strength to make it through somehow
I've never been more homesick than now

Are we all just a little homesick? Deep down some place inside, maybe even some place we don't know about or recognize? Is that the driving desire for acceptance? A feeling that there's some place else, some place better, some place where there will be no judgement once we arrive? I don't have all the answers, that's for sure. Mostly just questions.

Abba, I bring you my brokenness and place it at your feet. In those moments, the ones when I feel an overwhelming need to be accepted, I ask that you remind me that you accept me and want to bring me to you and a place where acceptance is no longer a concern.