Longing for Home and Heaven

With the holidays drawing near, a busy workload for Dan, and being in the midst of fall (which is my favorite season, but doesn’t really exist here in the Ecuadorian jungle) we find ourselves a bit more homesick. One would think after more than a year of living away from family, friends, and “home” we would be more settled in, but we find ourselves often in waves of feeling very settled and then homesick and longing for the more familiar. Of course we miss people we love in the states, but sometimes we find ourselves longing for things we never gave much thought to before they weren’t available. I suppose it’s a little like taking good health for granted until the day you get sick and realize how wonderful it is to be feeling well. We’ve missed World Series games; and cool, crisp autumn mornings; open fields of wheat; orange pumpkins (and all the pumpkin flavored treats: coffee, ice cream, pie). Yesterday one of the teachers at the missionary school who happens to be from Idaho pulled up her screen saver on a projector to get ready to do the morning worship at the school. Her screen saver is a picture her brother sent her a few weeks ago of downtown Boise, Idaho with fall-laden leaves changing color in the foreground and snowcapped mountains in the background. I couldn’t believe how much a longed to be sitting where the picture was taken right then and there.

I don’t think most Americans long for heaven very much. We can get pretty comfortable living life in the states and enjoying what we have here and now. I don’t think there is anything wrong with taking pleasure in the blessings God has given us. Living here, however, has helped me understand a little bit more what it means to long for a “homeland”. Even though none of us have ever been there, I’m beginning to think heaven will be a more familiar place than any other we’ve ever been to or can imagine. All the wonderful factors that make ‘home’ a marvelous place will be compounded and we’ll be more at ease than ever before. So today, as Thanksgiving draws near and you enjoy the blessings God has given you, think about heaven as well, and a future ‘home’ that will be more wonderful than any you could ever go back to.