This world is not my home

"This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through..." 

I hum the simple song in my head and think it's a little too upbeat for the moment. 

I've never been more homesick in my whole life for a home I haven't even been to yet. Coming home to America after a year in Africa makes me feel a little bit like I just don't belong here. Or there really. It's like my heart was made for somewhere that I just haven't found yet. 

Don't get me wrong: I love being in America and I love being in Africa. I'm really happy in both places, but I can't help but feel like neither one if them is where I ultimately belong. Like where I want to stay forever. 

I watch the news flashes about events in Paris. I see images of Syrian refugees and hear the heated debates of angry people who won't look others in the eye, who are so stuck in their own fear that they can't even look past it to actually see what matters. I think about the people I know and love in Burkina Faso who are suffering. Or persecuted. Or fighting real spiritual battles. Or fighting for life itself. I think about their pain even though I am absent, and yet I am surrounded by the pain of the developed world here in the United States. Families are falling apart. Cancer wins again. People are deceived by lies about sin and are choosing to happily live inside it. They hoard, they accumulate, they work too hard to earn money to keep up with the next best thing, and they never find what they are looking for. People are unhappy, and they are hurting. Everywhere in the world. 

That's not what we are made for. That's why I feel like I don't belong, like I don't want to stay here. That's why I find myself singing, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through..." But the tune is still a little too peppy for the pit that I feel in my stomach because, you see, sometimes the longing for heaven feels joyful. And sometimes the longing for heaven just hurts. 

We are made for a home where relationship with God is complete and pure. Where our relationships with each other are whole and we don't have to fear them breaking. Where there is no more disaster, dread, terrorism, fighting, killing, stealing, hurting, suffering, dying. Only worship and enjoyment of the presence of Jesus. Where what is wrong will be made right. We long for a heavenly home. 

One day Jesus will come, and he will bring a new heaven and a new earth, and what was broken will be made whole again. But until that day, we long and wait and hope. And we live in a way that will bring God's will "on earth as it is in heaven." 

Sometimes I get a glimpse of it. I find myself in the middle of one of the poorest places on planet earth, and I find people who are hearing about Jesus and are burning their idols in order to give their lives completely to him. I see God give the breath of life to a baby that shouldn't be breathing. I see him heal people that should have died. I also find myself in the middle of materialistic America, sitting at a piano surrounded by people who have been in prison, but have found freedom and joy in worshipping Jesus at the tops of their lungs. I sit on the floor in a home of young adults who have decided to live counter-culturally and in community with their neighbors in the inner city. And I start to think that heaven will be a little like this earth, only with everything unholy removed - a place where everyone will know and worship the Lord and find satisfaction in him. 

This time I sing the song with a spring in my step and a smile on my face because it's true - sometimes the longing for heaven comes with pain, but sometimes it also comes with joy. Come, Lord Jesus.