No Place Like Home

I have these days, like today, where an irrepressible longing for home rises up in my soul. A longing to watch the last rays of sunshine dance across a clear sky before hiding behind the mountains. Or to walk the streets of my little town, tucked between fields of golden wheat. A longing to drive up to my parent's house wrapped in fog, windows glowing in the dark. To open the front door and be met with the scent of brownies wafting from the oven. A longing to feel arms wrapped lovingly, protectively around me. I have these days where this longing for home commands complete residency of my heart and mind. A thought about any other subject simply cannot reside. There is no section, no corner of my heart left, for other feelings to occupy. It is painfully full, threatening to burst without cure.

If only I were Dorothy so I might click my sparkly red heels and whisper, "There's no place like home, there's no place like home." It's not that Indonesia is bad, in fact it is good in many ways, but its just not home. I am a foreigner, or as Indonesians say, a "bule." Try as I might, I do not fit in. Darn freckles and white skin. Indonesia holds parts of home with fellow college graduates, dear friends, and of course Jif peanut butter, but still it isn't home. I am not home, in fact, none of us are.

As children of God, this earth and all it holds, is not our home. Paul tells us that our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20).  Through Christ's death we are "no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household . . . with Christ Jesus as the chief cornerstone" (Ephesians 2:19-20). We don't belong down here on earth. We won't fit in, we shouldn't fit in. Our lives should be so entirely different the world recognizes immediately we are foreigners. We are "aliens and strangers in the world" (1 Peter 2:11) set-apart for Christ. Earth may hold glimpses of heaven, but let us "not love the world or anything in the world . . . for the world and its desires [will] pass away" (1 John 2:15,17). May we wait in eager expectation, even groaning inwardly like creation, for the world to pass away. Our hearts, our minds, completely focused on that day. The day of "our adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). The day we meet our Saviour. The day when we shall finally go home.

"But, our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." Philippians 3:20-21

I can't wait. Can you?