This week's Theme: The Call of Home
Day 1: Remember Home
A highly decorated war hero holds his place among all the interesting treasures in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Before his death, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, one of the highest military honors in France.
But this hero is not like others you know. His name is Cher Ami, and he is… a homing pigeon! He was one of several trained by the British and given to the American military as a gift during the First World War.
In 1918, as the war raged on, the "Lost Battalion," an American 77th Infantry Division wandered into enemy territory, and found themselves trapped and surrounded. They were outside of radio range and had only one way to communicate with their commanding forces—the providential gift of homing pigeons.
Unfortunately, the German forces shot down pigeon after pigeon as the brave birds tried to wing their way across enemy skies. But one determined little bird pressed on, undaunted.
The American soldiers watched with bated breath as he continued his mission, flying straight into the barrage of bullets from the enemy. Sadly though, the fearless flier was struck in the chest. He plummeted, along with all hope for the Americans.
Or so they thought! Somehow, the valiant little hero miraculously rose and took to the air again. He arrived at the base, 25 miles and a half an hour later, with no sight in one eye, and with a mangled leg coming apart from his body. But thanks to Cher Ami’s heroics, almost two hundred soldiers from the Lost Battalion made it safely back to American lines.
Cher Ami is famous among homing pigeons, but the entire breed has had an amazing military history. Selectively bred, they are descended from the wild rock dove—a marvel of creation with an uncanny ability to return to its nest with its natural magnetoreception. No one is quite sure how this process works, but most researchers believe pigeons use a "map and compass method" by determining both direction from the sun and the earth's magnetic field.
It isn’t just in the animal kingdom that we find magnetoreception. Humans too, have a sort of "built in" positioning system, although not in the same way as homing pigeons, or swallows, or butterflies.
Alexander Mc. Call Smith in his portrayal of life in Botswana through the eyes of a female detective, wrote, “Every man has a map in his heart of his own country and… the heart will never allow you to forget this map.” (Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency).
For most people that is true. There’s something about home—something about knowing that you belong, that this is your land, your people, your home… And yet, this is even truer in a spiritual sense, because this world is really not our home.
The same God who designed the homing instinct—the cartographer who designed the maps and positioning systems for all creatures—more than that, who designed the spaces and boundaries and markers throughout the universe—has set eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). He has placed in us a "remembrance of home," and a desire to get back.
For humans, home never ceases to beckon. It reaches a place of deep positioning, wistful remembrance, and restless desire for what was lost. It called to the Lost Son in Jesus' parable when he came to his senses and considered his plight. He remembered home. So he got up and went to his father (Luke 15:17-20).
And home continues to beckon under relentless enemy fire, even when chests are ripped open, and limbs torn from bodies. In cataloging the stories of faith in the Book of Hebrews, the writer describes those who faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword… (Hebrews 11:36-37). And yet they persevered:
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth… They were longing for a better country—a heavenly one (Hebrews 11:13, 16).
These heroes of steadfast faith pressed on “in spite of dungeon, fire and sword." I see them in the story of Cher Ami. I think of them in the way he pressed on, bloody, bruised and battered—losing an eye, but never his vision, losing a part of his chest, but never his heart, losing a leg, but never his locus. He knew where he was going, and he was determined to get there.
And so too, every wanderer, every Lost Son (Luke 15:11-24), every sojourner on this earth who listens above the roar of artillery and the thunder of war, will hear the call of home—eternity in their hearts—whispering, “Remember Home.”
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