I have tasted the fruit of a distant land and have within me a growing longing to taste it again, to taste it all the more, to leave this land and settle in that place of such delights, of such wonder. For though I do not know exactly where that place is, and though I cannot yet reach it, I see undeniable evidence that it exists. 

A touching story from long ago tells of a young boy who lived in the distant reaches of the vast Canadian prairies. His family was impoverished, and parents and children alike had to labor day and night to prove their homestead claim. There was little time for anything beyond work, little money for anything beyond the barest essentials. They lived a harsh, rugged, hand-to-mouth existence.

A day came when that boy’s father dispatched him to town to fetch supplies, so he dutifully saddled up a pony and made the long journey toward the newly-founded settlement and the railway depot that stood at its center. It was there, alongside the fresh tracks that stretched from horizon to horizon, that he had a chance encounter with a businessman who was traveling from east to west and who came bearing a few exotic gifts—oranges he had brought from far in the southern climes.

When the businessman saw that poor dusty boy in his ragged clothes, he felt pity, and in an act of generosity offered him a piece of his fruit. The boy tasted that orange and his eyes immediately brightened, his face immediately lit up, for he was certain he had never tasted anything so sweet, so wonderful, so delicious. And from that day forward he dreamed of visiting the land where oranges grow. He did not know quite where that land was, he did not know quite the direction it laid, but he was certain it existed for he had tasted its fruit—the fruit of a land far beyond his own.

This is a harsh and rugged world we live in, and one inhabited by harsh and rugged people. The Bible exaggerates nothing when it says there are none who are righteous, none who understand, none who seek after God. It claims only what is most patently obvious when it insists that all have turned aside, that all have become worthless, that all do what is evil when judged by the standards of the God who created us.

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