Tag: citizenship

Do you ever feel like you are caught between two worlds? The one where you are living and the one where you belong?

You are.

In Genesis when God created man and woman, He placed them in a garden and walked with them in the cool of the day. Did you catch that? We were created for garden living. We were created to walk with God. Sadly, that beautiful garden living was ruined in chapter three when Adam and Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit. No longer could a sinful creation live with a perfect God. Man was cast out of the garden, and God has been trying to bring us all back to Him since that day. This earth is our temporary home. We don’t belong here. We truly are foreigners here. Our citizenship is in Heaven. 

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”  Philippians 3:20-21

I’m ashamed to admit that before my son died, I didn’t think much about Heaven. I knew about it, and I wanted to go there sometime way in the future when I was very old and couldn’t take care of myself anymore. That was about it. It’s interesting how a single life experience can change us. Now, I dream about it. I imagine what it might be like. I long for it. I anticipate it the way a kid anticipates Christmas. My heart yearns for it.

It is hard to eagerly wait for something that we can’t see and don’t understand. Scripture is limited in its description of Heaven, which is challenging for me. I want to know everything about it now as I pass through Earth. While there is so much we don’t know about Heaven, we can know with certainty that it is the place we can look forward to, a place we strive for each and every day. It is the place that God has prepared for those who love Him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

If I am being honest, I love to think about what it will be like when we get to Heaven. Look around at the beauty of the creation where we live. Our Father is imaginative and creative and has designed a place for us to spend eternity with Him that is so beyond what our human minds can fathom.

I believe it delights God when we get excited about our eternal home.  I have even shared with Him a few things that I hope we will get to see and do in Heaven. One thing I know without a doubt is that it is going to be so incredibly perfect that not for a second will I miss earth or wish that Heaven were any different. 

Until God calls us from our temporary home to our eternal home, I pray we can live out the words of Romans 8:25 “But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” I pray that you are persevering in your walk with our Father and eagerly awaiting the eternal home that He has lovingly designed and created for each one of us. We have such hope to share with those around us while we are waiting to be called home.