Every year around this time, my husband and I face a struggle.
Neither of us grew up in Florida, and there comes a point each summer, after weeks of heat and humidity (and giant insects) that we look at each other and ask, "Do we really have to live here?"
Both my husband and I feel homesick for mountains and rivers and sweaters and snow days, and this is the time of year when it hurts the most to not have those things. Now, every year we eventually talk ourselves back into the benefits of living where we do (like our families, our community, the lovely winters, our beautiful new home, etc.) and as we settle our hearts again, we fight to remember one very important truth...
The thing we are longing for is not some childhood memory, but a future reality.
Here's what I mean:
We have all felt that homesick-like ache for the beauty and peace of childhood. Growing up is hard, and the older you get, the more you realize how hard it is to live, and sometimes you just want to go back to the "good old days."
But is this homesickness really only a longing for days gone by? Days that we know were anything but perfect? After all, today is just tomorrow's past, and even though one day we will miss this season, we still feel the weight of its present brokenness.
No. This homesick ache is not a desire for the past but a longing for an eternal country that we have yet to enter. It's a longing for a world made perfect, a Kingdom without sin, an existence filled with beauty and meaning and fellowship.
We're longing forward, not backward.
We need to remember that an eternity on a new earth awaits us, a future filled with every kind of sweetness and adventure! Our job now is to set our eyes forward, and not mistake our hope for heaven as a nostalgic longing for the past.
So if you find yourself in a season of discontentment, or if you're wrestling with feelings of longing and homesickness, remember the promise of what lies ahead for those in Christ. We are following Jesus all the way to a feast.
The best is yet to come!