Vacations, Homes, and Heaven

This past week, our family went to Horn Creek Christian Camp, near Westcliffe, Colorado. It was a wonderful but long week.  After we arrived home on Sunday evening, our youngest daughter went around the home exclaiming, “We’re home! It’s a miracle! It’s a miracle!” We obviously have some work to do on our daughter’s theology (she has made a habit lately of proclaiming any positive event a ‘miracle,’ but given my driving, maybe she’s on to something).

Even though I wouldn’t call our arrival home miraculous, I am grateful to God for bringing us home safely. I enjoy travelling and seeing my children have fun, but at heart I’m a homebody. On vacation, the bed isn’t my bed. The kitchen isn't my kitchen. The shower isn’t my shower. When I arrive home, I look around and there is a sense of “Yes, this is how things are supposed to be.”

That is why, when I travel, Hebrews 11:13-16 often comes to mind. After describing those whose lives displayed extraordinary faith, the writer of Hebrews explains why they had the ability to live such lives:

13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city (ESV).

The appropriate response for believers in this world is to feel like they are “strangers and exiles”—they are not at home in the trappings of this world. The entertainment and financial systems and political structures of this world have their place in our lives but we recognize our distance from these things even as we interact with them.

My prayer for you this week would be that you have a godly sense that things are not quite right and that you long for heaven as you live for God’s glory in this world.