“Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place — a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)‬‬

I’ve spent the last week away from home. Today we’re traveling back. I’m looking forward to that. It’ll be good getting back to my own bed and my own stuff and the people with whom I spend the most time other than my immediate family. Yet in being away from home, I’ve gotten to spend a week in the place and with the people who were my home for what was still most of my life (although I’m close to crossing the line where that won’t be the case any longer). It’s all got me thinking about what home means and where exactly home is. Let’s talk about it for a bit.

Have you ever had one of those moments when it hit you how old you really are? This trip has been one of those for me. I’ve gotten to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in years from family to my grade school principal and lifetime mentor to my best friend in the world (and as a bonus some of his family as well). It’s hard to describe how good it was to see all of them.

In seeing all these folks for the first time in several years, though, they were all a bit older than the last time I had seen them. After thinking to myself, “She’s gotten older,” or, “he’s gotten older,” (and occasionally, “they haven’t aged a bit”) for the umpteenth time, it occurred to me that I have too. Hopefully some of them put me in that last category, but given all the gray hair on my head and in my beard, probably not.

As good as it has been to be home, though, this trip was a reminder that this isn’t my home anymore. It’s a place I love and love going back to, but it’s not home. That’s an odd feeling which, if you still live in the place where you grew up, you’ve never experienced. Perhaps going back to the house where you grew up after you’ve lived somewhere else for a while with a family of your own can get you close to it, but probably not all the way there.

My home now is with my beautiful bride and handsome boys. It’s where we have been called to live and work. We’re in a great place and have no designs on being anywhere else anytime soon. And yet occasionally I feel like even that isn’t ultimately where I belong. Maybe that’s a tension you’ve experienced too.

If you have, I think there’s something to that sense that is true. It is true, that is, if you would count yourself a follower of Jesus. One of the things the New Testament authors make clear is that when we are followers of Jesus, we are part of God’s family. And when we become a part of God’s family, this world ceases to be our home. We may not feel it all that much at first, but over time, we will have a growing sense that we are not where we ultimately belong.

This holy discontent is a good thing. It is a reminder and confirmation of whose we are and where our home really is. Our home is Heaven in God’s eternal kingdom. I don’t mean that it’s going to be like Heaven either. It will literally be Heaven. It’s okay to have a longing for home.

We are not the first people to have such a longing. This is something God’s people have felt for a very, very long time. The writer of Hebrews spoke of this longing when he was reviewing the history of Israel through the lens of understanding what faith is. After telling some of the stories of these faithful souls of the past, he praises to offer an editorial observation.

“Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they were thinking about where they came from, they would have had an opportunity to return. But they now desire a better place — a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

These key individuals through whose lives God invested so much time and accomplished so much of the work of preparing the world for the arrival of His Son many, many years after they lived and died never got to see the full picture of the thing to which they had dedicated their lives. The glimpses God gave them, though, were enough to keep them pursuing His plans with incredible faith and faithfulness. They saw a home for themselves that was better than the one they had known. They saw this home and they committed themselves not simply to going there, but to making reaching it a live possibility for those who came after them including you and me.

If you follow Jesus, you are a stranger in this world. Some days we feel that more than others. We feel the longing. We feel the lack of belonging here. We feel the strangeness of the things which once were intimately familiar. We feel the exhaustion from striving for something we long to experience in full instead of in only the tastes and tidbits we get now. We want to be home.

The good news is that one day we will. The same God who promised He was going ahead of us to prepare a place for us so that we could one day be with Him will indeed return to fulfill that promise. He will redeem and restore what is broken in this world and in our own lives so that we can live in and with the holy perfection of His kingdom forever. We will get to be home.

So then, may you live each day with at least a bit of this holy discontent. May you experience the longing that is not satisfied by anything but Him. May you make the choices that shape you now more into the kind of person who will be fit for His kingdom when it arrives. May you work to disciple those around you into the same kind of people, growing God’s kingdom as you go. And may you do all of this with your eyes fixed firmly on the God who will not ever leave you or forsake you no matter how hard the journey gets until you are safely delivered to where you ultimately belong. Amen and amen.