Tag Archives: Aliens and strangers

Where do you call home?

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Home sweet home. There’s no place like home. Home is where the heart is.

 

So where do you call home? Is it where you now live?  Is it the place where you were born or grew up? Maybe you have a vacation property you think of as your home away from home. If home is where your heart is, maybe you’ve left left your heart somewhere else. What do you think of when you think of “going home?”

 

Probably, the answer depends on where you are in life and what consumes your thoughts and ambitions. If you have young kids or are in the middle of a house remodeling project, home is likely that place where you live. Those moving across town or across the world, likely think of home as where they are now and where they are going next.

 

Truth be told, we probably all consider this earth our home.  It’s where we have always lived, breathed, worked, and played. We’ve never been away from it. But while we don’t know the time, we all know we will certainly come to a point when we die and earth will no longer be home. Followers of Jesus easily talk of “going home” when they refer to heaven. Scripture reminds us consistently that heaven is our real home and that we should look forward to our heavenly home:

We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. 1 Chronicles 29:15

Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-20

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. Philippians 3:20

 

So if heaven is our true home and we are really just foreigners and strangers in this land called earth, why do we cling to this world so dearly, often at the expense of longing for or even thinking about our permanent heavenly home? We know heaven will be ever so much better than this place we now live. Why do we not eagerly await “going home?”

 

I think of the dad who told me of a conversation with his teenage son before his wedding day. “Do you look forward to going to heaven?” the dad asked. The son replied, “Yeah, but not before I get married and enjoy that wending night thing.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we probably have similar feelings.  We long for heaven when the time comes, but in the meantime we long for so much of earth. It’s where our treasure is. And because we were created human with physical senses it is also where so many of our desires are.  And don’t we long so dearly to remain with those God has taught us to love? We find ourselves caught in a conundrum, longing for earth, yet tiring of its troubles and woes, wanting to remain here and also sometimes yearning deeply to go home. One foot on earth and one foot in heaven, we remain with conflicted desires.

 

Randy Alcorn writes, “Our ancestors came from Eden. We are headed for a new earth (heaven on earth). We’re homesick for Eden. We’re homesick for Eden. We long for paradise – a perfect world without the corruption of sin, where God walks with us and talks with us in the cool of the day. Because we’re human beings, we desire something tangible and physical, something that will not fade away. And that is exactly what God promises us – a home that will not be destroyed, a kingdom that will not fade, a city with unshakable foundations, an incorruptible inheritance.”

 

Perhaps something that will help us in this dilemma is to realize that heaven will be in some ways a lot like earth, only without the suffering and sorrows. We’ll talk about that in the next post. But for now, I invite you to ponder this: “In what ways DO I long for my heavenly home and how might that impact my life here on earth?

 

 

 

intro to heaven

Now arriving

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While traveling on a ‘memory maker’ trip last week, we were greeted by this sign in one of the airports.

NOW ARRIVING:
HOPE
DREAMS
FAITH

It was a refreshing greeting and reminded me that wherever we go, our hopes, dreams, and faith (also love) go with us. And I wondered, are these evident when we go about our routine daily travels? Are they ‘carry ons’ or ‘stow away luggage’? Are faith, hope and love generally manifest when we walk into a room? Is our everyday conversation more often characterized by these or by complaining? Do we carry the dreams of who we want to become when we go to the grocery store or pay our bills? Or do we reserve these honorable qualities for more ‘spiritual’ times?

While visiting with my sister, the question came up:
Are we primarily spiritual beings with an earthly body, or are we earthly beings with a spiritual component? How would you answer? On the one hand, the earthly side of us is quite evident. We breathe, laugh, cry, suffer in pain, and experience the wear and tear on our physical bodies. And of course we have ambitions tied to those earthly bodies, desires for certain foods, clothes, shelter, and so much more. We readily feel and experience the effect of both pain and pleasure on our physical bodies, don’t we?

On the other hand, the bible tells us that while we are created both physically and spiritually, our essence and purpose is spiritually and relationship driven. Paul writes that we are aliens and strangers in this land, ambassadors to a foreign country. He further says that this earthly body is like a temporary tent while our spirit is our permanent temple.

If that is the case, why don’t we more often experience the world through our spiritual self? Why don’t we more often see with spiritual focus, hear with spiritual enlightenment, and touch with spiritual compassion? After all, our lives are blessed as are others when we experience life in this manner. Perhaps it is because we lack the regular discipline to consider spiritual living as our default mode. We are often distracted by ‘shiny things’ and the call of worldly things. We get off track dozens of times each day. I confess, sometimes I find myself distracted even while praying! What are we then to do?

Consider what you do when you encounter a road detour. Your choice always is to either focus on the problem or focus on the solution. It doesn’t help to ignore the physical situation but focusing on your hope of finding your way to getting back on track is the solution that sees you through. Isn’t the same true with spiritual living? There is no need to beat ourselves up over life distractions; simply turn our focus back to God and enjoy the reconnection with his presence.

Here is a practical application. Whenever you change environments this week – from one room to the next, from one meeting to the next, from home to work – ask yourself, “Is faith, hope and love arriving with me?”

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13