The concept of home is incredibly relative on the World Race. Home is wherever my sleeping pad and pillow are laid out, which is quite a capricious criteria. Home has been a concrete room on a rooftop in India. Home has been the marble floor of the Mumbai airport. Home has been a bamboo porch in Nelspruit, South Africa. Home has been a hammock, swinging over African dust. Last month, home was a twin mattress, which I shared with my friend Ally, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Today, home is a different, slightly bigger mattress, which I share with my friend Lydia. Every day, when my teammates and I finish ministry, we walk ((or sometimes, but rarely, drive)) home — where we are greeted by a ruffled, unzipped sleeping bag and a mildly dirt-stained sleeping pad.
But of course, home was not always these places. Originally, my teammates and I resided all across the States. For me, home will always hold the connotation of my brick house on Millstream Place in Raleigh, North Carolina. For others, Holland, Michigan or Lexington, Illinois or Lee’s Summit, Missouri and so on. Everyday, my team and I march on ((well sometimes we drag our feet begrudgingly because we don’t want the Race to end and we don’t know how we are already over half way done??!!)) towards June. Together, we navigate the rough waters and sail smoothly across the still waters until the day we return back to our hometowns. We encourage and inspire and reassure one another. But we keep in the back of our minds the reality that we won’t live with each other forever. All too soon, we will return to our hometowns, move to college, and ((try to)) get jobs. But we will forever carry the memories and lessons we have compiled from living with each other.
*small interruption that I promise is relevant* I’m not a Carrie Underwood fan. In fact, if you asked my closet friends or family they’d probably tell you that I borderline loathe her music. ((Apparently she recently had a really awful fall and had to get stitches?? So maybe this is a bad time to mention my distaste toward her music…I do offer my sincerest condolences.)) But anyway, I’ll put my bias behind me for a minute and comment on one of her songs. Temporary Home. In short, Carrie outlines the beautiful implication of Heaven — that our time on Earth is fleeting and one day, for those who choose, we will be reunited in Heaven with our Father. In the final verse, she sings about a dying man who knows that he will soon meet God in Heaven and he recognizes that then he will be home permanently. It’s really a lovely concept, one that I wish I reminded myself of more often.
At Training Camp in Georgia this summer, my team vowed to be a group of people who are “woke” for the Lord. We committed ourselves to Matthew 24.42-44, “Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Our most important objective as a team is not returning to our pillows at night. It isn’t even returning to our hometowns this summer. Our purpose is to spur one another closer to the Lord and to stay awake — looking for opportunities to further His kingdom. Home. Heaven. Home will one day be Heaven. Home IS Heaven and that is the best news of all. And so that is what I mean when I say that we are just walking each other home.
And we really are all just walking each other home. Every morning is a day closer to being united with Christ but it is our purpose to worship and to glorify and to honor our Father while we are here in our temporary home. Today I encourage you to remember that this Earth is not your permeant home. And that is SUCH good news!!!!
“But our citizenship is in heaven,” (Philippians 3.20).
All my love, P.
