Here We Are But Straying Pilgrims

Oh, how many times can we feel like we don’t belong. This feeling can hit us both often and surprisingly deeply because we have within us a profoundly spiritual longing for a better elsewhere. We can feel it even in our own hometowns, in the communities where we’ve lived in for years, sometimes even in our own homes while surrounded by our family. 

Artists: the poets, authors, movie makers and especially songwriters, so effectively call this to mind that it can become like an aching in our bones. Their mastery of emotion didn’t create this longing in us. They just skillfully remind us of it, tapping into something already deep within us. 

Yes, we deeply yearn for the comforts that home is supposed to provide: peace, security, provision, belonging, acceptance. But even if we had stable and loving childhoods, secure and prosperous upbringings—or if we’re now the ones striving to give that to others—we know deep within us, that this can’t it. This can't be all. And yet how many of us are successful at even providing that? There must be more. We want, we need, more. There must be more. 

We’ve been wanderers since God drove Adam and Eve out of His presence and from His garden due to their sins, and we’ve been sinfully and selfishly ruining every place we’ve been since. 

Only in God, through Christ, can we find that which we truly lack. Jesus invites us saying, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest,” Yes, “YOU SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS” (Matt. 11:28,29). So in Christ, we can sing both “This World Is Not My Home” and “Anywhere Is Home” and be correct in each.