Aliens And Strangers

Aliens And Strangers

Dear brothers and sisters, you are foreigners and aliens here. –1 Peter 2:11

Imagine God telling you that he has given you the country of Guatemala. You hop on the next plane and spend the rest of your life there, living not in a house, but in a camper. Your kids live in a camper by you, and their kids in the next camper over. You move from place to place with no citizenship and no rights—always an outsider, never fitting in.

This is what it was like for Abraham. God called him to leave his home and go to another land that he was promised as his inheritance. But Abraham never built a home there. In fact, the only land he ever owned was a cave in which he buried his wife, Sarah. But Abraham wasn’t dissatisfied or disappointed. Hebrews says that when he reached the land God promised him, “he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in a tent. And so did Isaac and Jacob, to whom God gave the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9). Evidently, Abraham’s dreams for a homeland were not rooted in Canaan or anyplace else on this earth. Abraham’s hopes were invested in his heavenly homeland. “He was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God” (verse 10). A city designed in God’s mind and built with his hands. I imagine that as Abraham stepped into that heavenly homeland he had hoped for and dreamed of, he exclaimed, “Heaven was worth waiting for! Now I finally feel at home!”

When we see ourselves as aliens and strangers in this world, our losses in this life don’t take such a toll, our disappointments don’t cut so deep. In fact, we begin to see them as blessings, reminders that we’re not yet home. We see through the illusions of security and success this world offers and remember that we are just visitors here. And our hope makes us homesick.

So if you feel like you never quite fit in, if you nurture a sense of restlessness, a sense of dissatisfaction with life as this earth defines it, congratulations! It’s all part of embracing your identity as an alien and stranger, seeing yourself as you truly are: a citizen of heaven. Heaven is the place where you will finally feel at home. No need to put down deep roots here.

Lord of my heavenly home, sometimes I expect too much of this world, forgetting that my real home, my place of rest and belonging, is in heaven. Remind me that I’m an alien and stranger when I try to make my home here.

DIGGING DEEPER