“Ya Can’t Get Theyah From Heyah”

“Ya can’t get theyah from heyah,” probably won’t make much sense unless you know New England well. It is a phrase that Mainers are made fun of for saying. Maine is a vast state of rocky shores, deep woods, with few straight roads outside of the cities. The north woods especially, remind me of Alaskan wilderness. As you can tell by the way I wrote it, true Mainers have a distinct accent.

For years I had only seen skits making fun of the phrase until one day when I was lost in Maine. (That was pre-GPS on all our phones.) My friends and I stopped to ask directions and the man answered with, you got it, “Ya can’t get theyah from heyah.” There was a pause, then all of us, even the man and his friends, burst into laughter. He’d lived in Maine quite a while, but this was his first occasion to say it in context. He still did not know how to help us. We laughed, but we were still lost.

My photo today reminds me of how our lives have changed, and how “going back,” is not an option. Ya can’t get theyah from heyah! Just like the world changed after 9/11, we are forever changed after the pandemic. Are we forever lost? I don’t believe so.

What do we do then? Receive the words of Jeremiah 33:^2-3 “This is God’s Message, the God who made earth, made it livable and lasting, known everywhere as God: ‘Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.’”

Each of us has both similar and divergent questions facing us these days. Many are mundane and others existential. When, Ya can’t get theyah from heyah, even in your head, who better to ask than the One who made us. We are finite. God is not. Far from it. Our Creator and Sustainer lives outside of time that we are grounded in, but we do not have to be stuck. 

The only All Knowing One is someone we are wise to cultivate a relationship with. As we do, we are drawn increasingly closer in intimacy and can recognize His answers better.  Our hearts and minds expand, drawing from God’s eternal resources. So, when ya can’t theyah from heyah, remember to ask, and know that all things are possible with God. (Matthew 19:16; Philippians 4:13)