I grew up in a city that comedian Steve Martin once called “the armpit of the nation.” Anyone I meet who has ever passed through Terre Haute, Indiana, almost always comments, “Oh yea – I’ve been through there – it smells funny.”
As a kid, I had no idea that others considered my hometown as something less than idyllic. I thought that every city was crisscrossed by countless railroad tracks and was dotted with factories that spewed forth mysterious, strange-smelling smoke.
As a matter of fact, I enjoyed growing up in Terre Haute. I was proud that three colleges were located in my hometown and that my father worked at the largest of them – Indiana State University. I was proud of our good high school basketball teams and I loved my neighborhood, the parks I played in, the friends I played with, and the schools I attended.
As I became a teenager, I realized that the grass might indeed be greener beyond the borders of Terre Haute and I began planning my evacuation of the chilly Midwest. I longed to live in a place where my nostrils wouldn’t freeze shut every time I went outside in the winter. A place where I could hit tennis balls all year round without donning seven layers of arctic apparel. A place that didn’t smell so strange and where I could perhaps even drive across town without getting delayed by at least one train.
So I went off to college in the sunny South, discovering the wonder of 60-degree December days and embracing the gracious nuances of life in this part of the country.
When I go back to visit Terre Haute now, I actually don’t pay much attention to the railroad crossings or funny smells in the air. I drive by the house I grew up in and I’m carried back to all those hours I spent playing freeze tag in the side yard and hitting tennis balls against the garage door. I go by Deming Park and remember sledding down those big, snowy hills. I love to eat the tomatoes and corn that just taste better because they came from Hoosier gardens.
It would be more impressive, I suppose, to say I was born in Beverly Hills or Aspen or Cape Cod, but I wasn’t. And that’s okay, because the fact is, where we come from doesn’t matter nearly as much as where we are now … or where we end up.
Abraham Lincoln was born in a tiny, primitive log cabin in the wilderness. I read that Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance. Not exactly glamorous beginnings for two of history’s greatest leaders.
And consider Jesus — born in a stable and raised in Nazareth, a town that sounds like it might have been the Terre Haute of Israel. In fact, the Bible records that when Nathaniel first heard about Jesus, his comment was, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Perhaps that’s why Jesus talked about fresh beginnings, clean starts, and new identities.
If you’re less than proud of where you’ve come from or the roads you’ve traveled in life, take heart — your past doesn’t have to determine your destiny. Your hometown may have been dingy, your family dysfunctional and your path destructive, but Jesus loves to make all things brand new. And brand new is only a prayer away.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17).