🙌It's the Friday Call to Worship!🙌

My neurodivergent six-year old is into creating nonsensical trivia. A recent car ride went something like this...

Him: "What color is an oval?"

Me: "Green."

Him: "NO! PINK! How many bricks are in a wall?"

Me: "Probably 96."

Him: "You were SO CLOSE. But sorry, it's 89."

When it was my turn to ask, he proudly answered questions about our address and which city we lived in. But everyone in the vehicle paid a high price when I was presumptuous enough to ask which country we live in without clarifying "which earth" I was referring to. To his credit, he is an American citizen who's never left South Africa. He says his grandparents live "in Captain America's world". (Hence, the not clarifying "which earth" calamity.)

I am fifteen years in to the decision I made as an adult to move to South Africa for missions, and my wires are still crossed. I have a US passport, a rental house in South Africa, a Texas driver's license, and a Tennessee residential address. I've converted to the metric system but not the Celsius scale. I don't have legal rights where I live, but I cannot live where I am a legal citizen.

Perhaps demanding to know "which earth" I meant wasn't a crazy question after all. If I'm very honest, there is no place on this earth that "feels" like home. Just like Paul says in Philippians 3:20, my "citizenship is in heaven". I've despaired often in decade of distance from those I love in America, AND I've learned to love the people I live amongst now in a way I never could have otherwise. The blessing of feeling out of place in this world is the constant assurance of the place I really belong: with Jesus. He is my home forever.

When we feel like we're not cut out for this, WE'RE NOT. When it feels like we don't belong, WE DON'T. There is unspeakable hope in our momentary discomfort. It reminds us of a large calling to invite the ones around into a forever home. There is more than enough room. (John 14:2)

Listen to Phil Wickham's "Homesick for Heaven".