COME UP HITHER!   

Like it was yesterday, I can remember my brother teaching me how to whistle with my two fingers pressed together and inserted between my pursed lips. (My brother told me one day that he did not want me to be a sissy, so he taught me how to swing a bat, how to excel at Kick the Can and he wanted me know how to whistle.) So, at the age of eight, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, determination filled my face as I kept trying to do exactly what he told me. At last, there was a faint whistle, and soon after, I nailed it down!

I loved being able to whistle that loud, piercing whistle! It was somewhat of a feather in my cap as I was growing up, and that was cool, but little did I know that it would become a necessity down the road!

One thing I hated in my apartment building as a youngster was when moms and dads yelled at the top of their lungs to call their kids home. My dad whistled. He didn’t have the loud whistle down, but no matter, our playing area was always in earshot of his somewhat quiet whistle. Besides, believe me, our ears were tuned to hear it!

For us, when our kids played outside, they were spread up and down the street and in neighbors’ yards and not easily spotted. So I would whistle, and they would come home. It was a great blessing! One time, Ken and his brother-in-law dropped me off at the house late at night and started down the street to go run an errand. The front door was supposed to be unlocked. It wasn’t. I ran out to the sidewalk and as they were turning at the end of the street, I whistled for all I was worth. It was before cell phones, and I knew it was going to be a long wait until they returned. Ken heard me, drove around the block and returned to the house.

During the summer months, during those first years we moved to Woodstock, the kids spent most of their days at the swimming pool. Sometimes I would stay, but sometimes I would drop them off and come back for them several hours later. The pool was always packed, and I discovered the only way to get the attention of my five children was to stand outside the fence and whistle. When I did, my five, in the midst of a couple of hundred kids, would stop what they were doing and look over at me!  I’d give them the time-to-go-home signal and they would climb out of the pool and head for the locker room, most of the time sadly.

It occurred to me one day that the day is coming when God’s children, those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior, driving and mowing and working and cooking and swimming, are going to hear a time-to-go-home whistle and up we’ll go. We call it the Rapture. The Bible says that Jesus is going to call for His believers. Revelation puts it “Come up hither.” And just like my kids knew my voice, my whistle, the children of God, the true believers, are going to recognize the shout and the trumpet and leave for home! I Thessalonians 4 says that we’ll be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air to be forever with Him. What a day that will be!