In his book, In the Eye of the Storm, best-selling author and pastor Max Lucado talks about traveling from one speaking engagement to another. He had traveled from San Antonio to Boston and had spoken at a gathering in Boston. Then he was scheduled to fly to Edmonton, Canada in order to fulfill another speaking engagement.

When his plane landed in Minneapolis and he had to change airplanes, he was thinking about how tired and hungry he was, and how crowded the airplane had been, and how his back was aching. His mind was throbbing. Try as he might, he couldn’t even remember who was supposed to meet him at his destination in Canada.

As he was heading to the gate to catch his next airplane he saw a McDonald’s in the distance and thought, “That looks good. Maybe I’ll run over there and buy a hamburger and that will at least satisfy my hunger pains.”

Then he writes, “I passed something better. I passed a telephone and decided to call home. I called and my wife answered the phone. I’m convinced that when my wife gets to heaven she’s going to be at the reception desk welcoming everyone in because when she answers the phone it makes you feel so good.”

He continued, “I just talked with her. We settled earth shaking issues. We talked about the weather in San Antonio vs. the weather in New England. We talked about what the girls did when they went to school that day and that one of them was going to have a friend over to spend the evening.”

“We talked about earth shaking things like that,” he said. “And after I had finished talking with her I really felt good. Then she passed the receiver over to one of my daughters who told me about her day. When she finished she said, ‘I love you, Dad.’”

And he said, “It felt good to be loved.” Then the phone was passed over to the next daughter and she talked to him for a while and said, “I miss you, Dad.” And he said, “It felt good to be missed.”

Then he recalled, “They passed the phone over to the little six month old baby, and I talked to my baby over the phone. I cooed and I talked baby talk, and the people passing by looked at me in strange ways. But it felt good to be cooed at. Then we hung up and I made my way on to the next gate.”

Surprised by the moment, he said, “I forgot how hungry I was. I forgot how tired I was because I had called home, and that made all the difference in the world.” He added, “Maybe we all ought to call home more often. If you do, you will find the listening ear of God so anxious to talk to you, and God will make you feel good from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. And as you grow in your love you’ll find your fears disappear.”