This weekend we will be visiting Bethel University with our daughter. She is considering attending there in the fall. My wife Suanne and I both attended Bethel, as well as our two sons. Bethel is a very familiar place for us. Whenever I visit Bethel, I am reminded that I am only a visitor on campus. I don’t really belong there. As I watch the students hurrying from class to class I realize that they live in a different world than I do. Although the buildings are very familiar, I have moved on to a different place in my life.
We all experience this feeling. As we progress on our journey through life, we are constantly moving from one reality to another. As we move out of one phase of life and into another, we must leave the old phase behind. When I visit my family in Ohio, I am struck with the realization that, although I grew up there, that is no longer my home. The places I frequented are still familiar, but I’m now a stranger in my home town.
The Bible tells us that spiritually we are strangers in familiar places. We are born into this world. We grow up as a part of this world. We are comfortable with our surroundings. This is home. When Jesus comes into our lives, all of that changes.
2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” When Christ enters into our lives, we begin to experience a new reality. We pass from a world dominated by sin and death. We enter a world motivated by the love of Christ. Through our relationship with Christ, we view our world differently. The places that were so appealing and comfortable lose their allure. We begin to feel less at home in this world.
Several years ago a friend of mine from China traveled home to visit his family. He had become a Christian while he was here. I warned him that he might find things very different back home. He assured me that nothing had changed. When he returned to Minnesota, I asked him how his trip went. “Everything has changed,” he replied. His friends had married and settled into jobs. The things they wanted to do while he was visiting made him uncomfortable. “I feel more at home in Minnesota than I do in China,” he concluded.
The longer we walk with Jesus, the less we should feel at home in this world. We have become strangers in familiar places. In Hebrews 11, the author talks about the great people of faith in the Church. In verse 13 he states, “And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.”
There is an old gospel song that puts this feeling into perspective. “This world is not my home. I’m just passing through.” Those lines capture the reality for every Christian. This is not home. We are on a journey to our real home with Christ in heaven. We should never let ourselves get too comfortable here and forget where we are headed.
Over the years I have had the privilege to work with many international students. Some of them have come from countries that don’t experience the freedom that we have here in America. The longer these students stay in America, the less they want to go home. Some of them try to set up residence here, forgetting that they are aliens and strangers in a foreign land. Spiritually, that is the way it can be for us as well.
The old song was right. This world is not my home. Although I can adjust to my surroundings, and even feel comfortable in them, I don’t belong here. And neither do you.
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