Our Heavenly Home

Shortly after moving to Pennsylvania from Missouri, I started to get sick. Sniffles, a sore throat, a persistent cough, and a missing voice (not too great for someone studying music) have been a part of almost every day for about a month. A couple weeks in, I realized that it probably wasn’t a long-lasting cold, but that I must be allergic to something in the environment here that wasn’t back in Kansas City. As silly as it sounds, this mild, but never-ending sickness reminds me that Pennsylvania falls short of the perfect home I’ve been searching for. 

Pennsylvania is the fourth place I’ve lived during my relatively short life so far. Each place made up a significant portion of my life, so now, when people ask me where home is, I don’t know how to answer. Each one was beautiful and good, but also had its shortcomings, or even painful things about it. I’ve revisited each place and longed for just one of them to be a lifelong home, but for me and many others, every day offers an abundance of reminders that nowhere here is home. People make us feel out of place. We find ourselves in situations where we aren’t in on the joke (and no one seems to want to let us in). We feel lonely even when surrounded by people. We long for a different environment, a different culture, different weather. 

We spend our lives chasing the perfect home. We settle in different places, hoping this one will fulfill our longing—not just temporarily, but will truly, deeply, and comfortably feel like a forever home.

But every place here is temporary. It’s not meant to feel permanent. We are sojourners on this earth.

“For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding” (1 Chron. 29:15).

Hebrews 11 outlines the “heroes of the faith,” those who, by faith, endured, sacrificed, obeyed, and believed—and they knew what it was like to live as strangers. 

After the fall, Adam and Eve were sent out from the garden, and Abel shepherded flocks in a previously unsettled land. Though the work was hard and it may have been lonely, Abel worked diligently and offered an acceptable sacrifice to God (Gen. 3:23, 4:1-5).

In the midst of an evil generation, Enoch walked with God. He lived by faith, and “God took him” (5:22).

Noah lived in a time of great human wickedness, lived through the demolition of the earth as he knew it, and started life over after 40 days when the ark landed.

Abraham and Sarah were sent out of their land (12:1), and lived as foreigners in an unknown place. They traveled, pitched tents, built an altar to the Lord, and moved on to a new place. 

Hebrews 11 says, 

“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. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 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.”

In all of their wandering, toiling, uprooting, and resettling again and again, they were faithful, and that faithfulness was rewarded. For all of us who long for home, who move, put down roots, and work where God has called us, we have an eternal home to look forward to. Christ has gone to prepare a place for us. Where he is, we will be also (John 14:2-3). 

Every time we feel out of place, we can be reminded that our longing for home is pointing us toward our heavenly home. If we chase satisfaction in an earthly place, we will never find it, but in Christ we can be satisfied. “Here, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). What a city it will be.