Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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 I woke up slowly from a dream that I was having. I had just been home, visiting with my parents, sleeping in my bed and wearing all the clothes that wait for me in my closet. In reality, I was in my tent that was set up on the cement floor of the church we were living in. My hair was greasy from only being able to wash it with water fetched from a well about a half a mile away. I smelled a little weird due to this same water situation. There were geese honking outside the church and I was waking up to the knowledge that I was half a world away from my family, my comfort and my HOME.

Why now? Why month six? Why when I get to Africa?

I don’t have the answers to these questions. But God was faithful to reveal His truth in the midst of missing home. Oh don’t get me wrong, He let me have my time of feeling sorry for myself. He let me struggle through wanting to go home mostly every day. But then He let me see the truth of the matter and it made a little more sense to me.

His explanation started one morning when He took me to Hebrews 11. Verses 13-16 says this

“They agreed that they were foreigners, and nomads here on earth (have I felt like a foreigner and nomad this year? absolutely!) Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them!”

My heart was longing for something that would not have been met even if I had gone home. When I talked to my mom at the end of Kenya she was able to tell me that even if I had been home, it wouldn’t be perfect like I was dreaming it would be. So what was I longing for then? I was longing for a heavenly home. A place that I have been perfectly designed for. This thought brought me to Romans 8:21-23 that says

“But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of the future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us.


I then wrote on the bottom of my journal

<No wonder I am “homesick”. It is merely a symptom of a longing for my real home… So spirit inside of me, long away!>