The Apostle Paul said, “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20) and the Apostle Peter said, “Live your life as strangers here (I Peter 1:17). I have believed and said countless times, “that we expect too much from this life here on earth.” We act as if we can settle down and make our home here forever. We work and save up for retirement as if it were heaven itself.
We expect this broken world to hold the answers to peace and happiness. Take Christmas, for instance. We’ve come to idealize the family sitting happily around a beautifully lighted Christmas tree with peace and love filling their hearts. Yet, reality is that Christmas does not always bring the closeness to family and friends that we dearly long for. Someone is mad and refuses to come to the family get-together. Another is absent due to a serious illness…or even death. And their divorce and remarriage sets up a dynamic that even Solomon in all his wisdom can’t resolve. And when the season passes and we’ve packed away the wreaths, lights, ornaments, etc…we sigh, “well maybe next year”.
If, for all practical purposes, we believe that this life holds our best shot at happiness, and if we further believe that this is as good as it gets, well then we will live out our lives as desperate, demanding, and despairing men and women. We will place on the shoulders of this world a burden it was never meant to bear. The fact of the matter is that most of us live as though this life is our only hope, and then we feel guilty for wanting to do exactly what Paul said he would do if that were true, “…eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
Fact is: heaven is our real home and perfection won’t be achieved until we get there. God made us to spend eternity with Him. Now we do get a foretaste of what it will be like here on this planet because of Jesus operating on and in our lives. Someday we’ll be in His presence… ”face to face”…now that’s the real deal of living.
There was a man of God, whose name was Job, who experienced life at its best and its worst. When his life “was in the dumpster”…a real low with his children, cattle and home destroyed and his wife verbally abusing him…his body in pain; this guy, who you would expect to be really angry with God, said this, “I know that my Redeemer lives and in the end will stand on this earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh, I will see God. I myself will see Him with my own eyes…I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27)
What kept Job going was that he had hope, not merely that things would get better in this present life, but if they didn’t, he could and would look forward to seeing God.
It has been said that our longing for heaven whispers to us in our disappointments and screams through our pain and agony. C.S. Lewis said, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Yes, this world is not my home! As the old gospel song says: “This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through, my treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from Heaven’s open doors, and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore!”
What we’re experiencing in this life is not as good as it gets…focus your eyes on heaven…be encouraged…the best is yet to come!
