Hurry home! —Dad.
Foraging through old boxes, as my husband and I cleaned out our garage, I started to cry when I saw that brief note. Written over 18 years prior, the message had been quickly scrawled on the jacket of a plane ticket my dad had sent me when I was in college. Because I attended a school over 1,200 miles away from home, I eagerly anticipated any chance to see my family. Seeing his words again was especially poignant as my dad’s home today is no longer on this earth.
Not a mere message from my earthly father, the note held deeper reminders. Our hope rests on something far more than what we see with our eyes, and this world is not our real home (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
The price for our sin having been paid on the cross, God has “made [us] alive with Christ, for He forgave all our sins” (Colossians 2:13). In that same letter, Paul continues by saying, “Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand” (Colossians 3:1).
As believers, we’re called to live in a world of paradox. What we can see, touch, and hear around us remain but a hint of what is real. And yet, we must remember that the apostle John testified of the Messiah “whom we have heard and seen. We saw Him with our own eyes and touched Him with our own hands. He is the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). Jesus became visible in the “shadow-world” that He might call us to the reality of the invisible.
Heaven is not a myth or a legend; it is reality (1 Thessalonians 4:17-18), and the encouraging message of the cross continues to speak, hurry home.
NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Luke 17:20-37
More:
Read 2 Peter 3:3-9 to understand how our perspective of this world is to be different from that of someone who doesn’t believe God’s message.
Next:
What are some practical ways we can live out the duality of living in this world while holding on to the reality of heaven? In what ways is God calling you to speak to those who need His message?
tom felten on August 21, 2012 at 10:00 am
Thanks for this inspiring message, Regina. As believers in Jesus, we experience the tension of serving God on earth while looking forward with hope to one day being with Jesus. Peter captured this experience well when he wrote, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have a priceless inheritance—an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay” (1 Peter 1:3-4). What a gift it is to live in “great expectation”!
regina franklin on August 21, 2012 at 1:04 pm
Dear Tom,
As you know, Scott and I are preparing to move to a new town. Now in the time of waiting for our house to sell, and anticipating a new house we have not yet seen (or found), I am reminded again of the ever-present reality of heaven. I am excited about going home someday, although it remains to be seen when that day will be. This world is not my home.
winn collier on August 27, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I wonder how the knowledge that our future is the new heaven joined to the renewed earth plays into this? I remember N.T. Wright’s quippy line: “Heaven’s great, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Surely, whatever our future, it is with Jesus. And that is good, good news.