We spend our entire lives trying to make a home here. We build houses, communities, and personal relationships in order to obtain this sense of belonging. We seek comfort above all else. We desire a refuge, a place of rest. This is all well and good, but as a great admirer of C.S. Lewis, I cannot abandon this quote of his:
“I have found a desire within myself that no experience in this world can satisfy; the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
I was made for another world. Let’s think about that.
The Creator of everything forms together a human being. A man. Creatively and intricately designed to breathe, eat, and sleep. Wow. Then He gets even more creative and makes a woman. She was intricately designed to laugh, cry, scream, laugh some more, cry some more, scream some more, and then simultaneous laugh, cry and scream, all while cooking dinner and cleaning up messes left behind by her sloppy husbands and precious, dirty, ungrateful children. Flawless.
So He creates this man and woman for what, exactly? They take care of His garden. Mmk. They name some animals. Cute. They walk around naked and eat some fruits and veggies. Gross. But what was His intention for them on earth? Why did He want them here, when they could have been there? Why did he create human beings for a home in eternity, but place them in time?
I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the answers to these questions. I am simply too small. His Greatness cannot be measured, and yet He gives us the measurable world of time. His Love is infinite, and yet we live in a finite existence. His Grace is unending, and yet we only concretely know the beginning and end of creation, and nothing beyond.
After The Fall, this man and woman were “booted out” of the garden, overwhelmed by shame and guilt, and left to wander in a world of pain and suffering. And we have been wandering ever since. We have left the garden of our Creator to wander until our journey ends on earth and begins in eternity. Yet, He does not leave us. He has never left us. His Presence becomes our home. The very Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in us, beckoning us to keep our eternal home in mind. He has seared into us a longing for the world we were created for, and only by remaining in Him can we even begin to cast a vision for that world.
So here we are, called as wanderers for the rest of our lives, attempting to create that which we were not meant to have until eternity: home. Onward we trudge, as nomads in a strange place, pitching our tents wherever the Spirit guides us. We are constantly chasing the Presence that draws us nearer and nearer to our homeland. Only in moments of pure, uninhibited pause can we truly receive a glimpse of home. He grants us vision to see it. He gifts us with a persistent longing for it. And He calls us to stand on the promise of it.