Homeward Bound: Why We Keep the Destination in Mind
Last year a wildfire made its way into my friends Paul and Sharon’s neighborhood. We Californians know all too well that wildfire season is no joke. Evacuation warnings must be taken seriously.
My friends spent the night before the fire reached their area deciding what to take and what to leave. At 3 am their city issued a mandatory evacuation, and by 4:30 am they had packed up their car and loaded the kids. As they drove away, they saw the hills behind them glowing, ashes falling like snow, neighbors yelling to wake up other neighbors, and cars being backed up. His neighborhood looked like a war zone.
Paul wrote of his experience, “I just imagined, what if we saw someone decorating a Christmas tree while the rest of the neighborhood was evacuating. It was a very sobering reminder to live our lives with eternity in mind.”
It’s wildfire season again here in California. I’m reminded of how the Bible contains the evacuation warning to end all evacuation warnings. Sin’s entry into this world set it on a trajectory course towards destruction. The scriptures blare the sobering message: do not love the world but flee from the wrath that is to come!
But this evacuation warning isn’t all bad news. It comes with a promise.
WARNING: THIS WORLD IS NOT OUR HOME
Like Christian’s family in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, we too live in the City of Destruction. Trying to make this world our home is the spiritual equivalent of decorating a graveyard for the dead. But there are pilgrims, like Christian, who will one day find themselves unburdened and safe in the Celestial City.
The journey to heaven can be treacherous, though. It’s fraught with real enemies and dangerous temptations that hinder us from finishing the race to life everlasting. We need God’s warnings and promises along the way, or else we forget his promises, like the Israelites. Nostalgic for the melon, cucumber, and mint of Egypt, they were forgetful of the cruel enslavement they’d been freed from.
What kinds of warnings and reminders do we need? We need to be warned that this life is not about our comfort, ease, and early retirement. We need to be warned that this place casts a dangerous illusion. It is Satan’s candy shop.
MUCH-NEEDED REMINDERS
We need to be reminded that our citizenship is in heaven and we’re only here as ambassadors of God’s kingdom, freed to bring glory to God. Therefore, we don’t get entangled in civilian pursuits, but we aim to please the one who enlisted us (2 Tim. 2:4).
How quickly I forget that I’m a sojourner. I am tempted to build my own personal kingdom filled with fortresses of comfort and towers of self-glorification. It’s no wonder the Apostle John told Christians that everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—come not from the Father but from the world. And while the world and its desires pass away, those who do the will of God will live forever (1 John 2:15–17).
And in 1 Corinthians 3:13–15, Paul warns believers about how they spend their lives as he explains the fire of judgment this way:
Each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
But parallel to the call to flee is the promise of a better home—an invitation to find salvation, safety, and, shelter by fleeing to Jesus for refuge.
THE PROMISE OF SOMETHING BETTER
While these warnings are real and necessary, the promises of God are equally so. Evacuation warnings keep us from foolishly making this temporal world our home, but the promises invite us to find everlasting life and joy in obedience to Jesus Christ.
I love how the writer of Hebrews gives a biblical theology of God’s people as sojourners, fueled by faith in his promises. In chapter 11 he begins with Abel and works his way through the different characters of the Bible, then says,
All these people . . . 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. . . . 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. (11:13–16)
And at the end of the list of the faithful servants, we have this declaration: “the world was not worthy of them” (Heb. 11:38).
Viewing this world rightly helps us live for the new heavens and the new earth. We can make decisions big and small, without fear and regret, when we remember where home actually is.
I remember my friend Aylin once saying, “Home is a person, and it is the person of Jesus Christ.” Or as Moses puts it in Psalm 90:1, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”
HOMEWARD BOUND
While we’re away from Christ, we sense a kind of holy dissatisfaction and a deep longing to be with him. We feel it in our bones when we witness the suffering and brokenness of the world around us. We feel it in the emptiness of worldly ambition which makes us greedy for more, only to satisfy us less and less. We feel it because, as Augustine wrote in his Confessions, God has set eternity in our hearts, and we are restless until we find our rest in him.
Home is a person, and it is the person of Jesus Christ.
So, take this as an encouragement to really live the way God created you to live. Do not seek to find your worth in this world or the things of the world but live eternally minded so that this world is unworthy of you. Take these evacuation warnings and promises to heart, fellow pilgrims.
And remember, it is those who look like Jesus in this world who will have confidence on the day of judgment (1 John 4:16–17).
Beverly Chao Berrus lives in Southern California with her husband Jason, a pastor in Los Angeles. They have three children. She contributed to His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God. She also teaches for TGC Women's Training Network. She enjoys serving in her local church, exploring the world with her kids, watching movies with her husband, and reading.