“These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth. Now those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes life is hard. It’s hard for all sorts of different reasons. Sometimes it’s hard because we’ve made it hard. Sometimes it’s hard because somebody else has made it hard for us. The end result generally winds up being the same regardless of the starting place. We’re left looking around and wondering how we got here. More than that, we’re left looking around wondering how long we have to stay here or even what we can do to get out of here. But the truth is that in so many of the hardest hards in our lives, leaving isn’t a viable option. What if, though, there was a way to transform the hard into something else entirely? A song I’ve been listening to recently offers a bit of reality both of the now in our hard, but also a window into what could be. Let me share it with you today.

I think I’ve probably shared more music from The Gray Havens than from any other artist over the years. Part of the reason is that I listen to them more than just about any other artist these days. In fact, since I first discovered them a few years ago, I don’t think anyone else has come close in terms of the volume of music that I consume. The other and more significant reason is that I don’t know of any other artist whose lyrics have such insight and spiritual depth to them. Combine that with a really good soundtrack, and you’ve got a fan in me.

The latest song that has so caught my attention is called Anywhere. Like I said just a second ago, there are times in life when we just want to escape. There’s nothing but problems everywhere we look, and we don’t know how to address any of them. We don’t have the energy to address any of them. We just want to be anywhere other than where we are. We look for ways to escape our circumstances even if only into a world of distractions that keep us from having to think about them or honestly address them for time.

The trouble with trying to escape is that reality has a way of asserting itself and forcing us to deal with it eventually. We can run, but it will find us. As David sings, we can try to flee to the second star to the right and straight on ’til morning, but even there, the sun will still rise, and we’ll have to deal with the things that are hard in one way or another. Sometimes, running away only allows things to get even harder. When they finally catch up to us, if we’ve been running for very long, it’s much uglier than it might have otherwise been.

But what if there was another way? What if instead of running from our hard, we faced it? What if there was a way to see it transformed into something else entirely? What if we could find a way to finally say, “Don’t take me anywhere but here”?

This is where the Gospel speaks rather powerfully into our circumstances. The Gospel offers us an avenue into the life that is truly life. In Christ, we are offered an invitation into the real life of the kingdom of God. His is a kingdom that will last forever and where every last vestige of what makes life so hard here will be banished forever.

Okay, but how does that help us now? Wishful thinking about the future doesn’t transform the hard that we are facing now. No, but it transforms us and the way we interact with and think about it. When we know that we have a future that is secure and vastly better than what we face now, we can face now with more courage and confidence. We can face it with hope. We can do even more than that. We can take active steps to see it start to take on the characteristics of the future we long to experience.

We can love like we will then. We can react with the same unending kindness and patience we will have for the people and situations around us then. We can be gracious and humble in our assumptions about the people around us like we will be then. We can respond with the gentleness and compassion that will characterize all our interactions then. We can speak truth with love and confront injustice with Gospel passion.

When we accept that the Gospel and God’s kingdom are really real, we can start living now like we will then. We will start to see echoes of God’s kingdom in the world around us, in the situations we are facing that would otherwise be nothing but hard. We will see opportunities to invite others into that same kingdom with us. And we’ll find that instead of wanting to run away or lose yet another day to mindless distractions, we’ll at last learn to stay. We’ll stay because in Christ, we’re already home and safe. When we take Him with us into the hard facing us now, we won’t want to be anywhere other than here because here is where He is. And where He is, is where we want to be.

Without further ado, then, here is Anywhere by The Gray Havens. May it bless you as much as it has blessed me.