I have been a sojourner, alien, foreigner for over 14 years now, and have become increasingly comfortable with an identity as an outsider. In a way I have come to embrace this identity with its roots in the biblical truth that we are aliens and sojourners in this world … never fully at home, longing for the world to come (Hebrews 11: 14-16). But I sense a shift is happening. A shift that doesn’t leave this perspective behind, but one that turns towards home.
What would it look like to know and embrace the biblical reality of being home with my Father now, today? To experience the security of being a child at home in a world that is not our home. In other words, I am starting to sense wonder in the words of Jesus, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14: 23) Make our home with him. There are questions here: what does this look like? How am I shutting the door on my Father? How can I experience this more fully? Questions worth exploring. But there is also a mysterious wonder here: God Himself dwelling with me, the Son at home in my heart, the intimacy of living with the Trinity, the rest and peace of being home and tasting an eternal reality.
This ‘homeward’ thinking reveals another one of those Kingdom paradoxes: we are at once aliens in a far off land, and children at home with our Father. I have spent 14 years mostly knowing the former, and now long to know more of the latter.
