Slept like a rock near the Rockies last night until city sirens broke the peaceful Colorado silence. The unfamiliar blare from the streets of downtown Denver pierced through a hotel window 18 stories up in the Mile High City. Instantly, I scanned my brain, searching for locality and realized I was no longer at home in the country.
It is an odd sort of experience to suddenly be so disoriented. Thankfully the mix of fear and confusion is just as quickly answered with reality and reason. But the desire to be in familiar surroundings lingers, even as sleep slowly returns. Home.
Wide awake and full of faith, the faithful hall-of-famers listed in Hebrews 11, must have felt that same sense of disorientation and longing. By faith and in holy fear, Noah built a boat for a rain unknown and waters unseen. By faith, Abraham journeyed to a land far away and believed in the promise of heirs though in his old age and married to a barren woman. Both desired a place of refuge and the comforts of home. Enoch, who pleased God, took the short route, bypassing even death to make his final and eternal trip. He goes down as one most blessed! They all had in common a distant destination to a place of perfect rest, undisturbed by the sirens of this world. Home.
"All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13-16)
Like the saints of old, the longer I live on this earth, the more disoriented I feel and the more desirous I become for that heavenly home.
The world is filled with flood waters of grief and pain. We're instructed to rise above the murky waters and rescue the perishing. "Get on the boat! Take others with you!" are the cries of our Heavenly Father, who holds out a lifeline that pulls us Home.
The Lord calls for us to be obedient even when we don't know the way and can't see the city. He reaches down with an unseen hand that guides us gently and intentionally toward Home.
And some day, through immediate lift or by death, we shall make the journey of Enoch and instantly be in the presence of holiness. If we walked in faith on this earth, we'll be Home.
In the meantime, no matter where I lay my head, I can set my mind at ease if I cling to the goodness of God's plan for transformation and transportation from this world to the next. It's about scanning the brain and landing on the reason I live and breath then trusting in the reality of life everlasting.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."
(Romans 12:1-3)
God's perfect will is that none would perish, but all would come Home.
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