Plague Journal (67): Mind the Gap!

It has blessed me greatly over the years to have known a few exiles. They had fled their homes on the other side of the world in fear, and in time had made their way to America. Here in America, they were always incredibly grateful to this country, but they also loved their homelands. Most of them held within their breasts two competing desires or dreams. One, to return. The other, to remain.

This reminds me of Paul saying to the Philippians that he desires to go and be with the Lord, and yet also, since there is still work for him, his stronger desire is to remain. Especially as a Christian believer grows older, he or she begins to long more and more for home: an end to exile. This looks like a longing for death, but it is nothing so morbid. It is a longing for real life, for the heavenly city. It is a longing for the end of exile.

Not morbid, and not in the end other-worldly either. I think that, as the Christian believer grows older, they come to love this world aright. They don't long to be away from this world so much as for the world's renewal. They don't speak wistfully of its destruction, but longingly of its fulfillment in the new heaven and new earth. Paul reminds us elsewhere that even the world itself, its rocks and trees, long for this.

The exiles I have known became exiles overnight when they fled for their lives from the countries they called home. But a Christian's sense of exile grows slowly. We begin as children of this world, longing only for more and more of what surrounds us. But then, for many of us, when we became believers, we were aware suddenly that in some strange way a gap had opened up between us and this world. We became aware of our exile. We were strangers in a strange land. But soon, for most of us, that dreamlike awareness disappeared. And so there we were: in this world and also of it.

Sometimes God gives us a vision of the future in order to fire our longing and cause us, thereby, to seek Him with all our hearts. The vision that beguiles me always is that from the Revelation of John, the 21st chapter. That's where we see a perfectly cube-shaped city descending from the sky down to the earth. 

Its shape as a cube is only meant to be symbolic of its perfection. There are streets in this city, and a throne, and a river that flows from the throne, and trees that line the river and remain green throughout the year. You see, it is a city of life. This is not a back-to-nature vision, but a vision of the union of the city and country into a wholistic space that will last for all eternity.

This is a picture of homecoming where the home comes to us rather than we to the home. It is meant to fire our hearts, for someday this world will indeed be our home, the abode of God and of those who love Him. In the meantime, we live as exiles, seeking the peace of the very earthly cities in which we live now, not only drawing back from evil and warning everyone in all seriousness about its presence but also, as we grow and mature, bearing the fruits of the Spirit for the good of all even in our exile.

What I want to say is, the gap is real. As we keep in step with the Spirit we will grow in our awareness of it. There was never really a single moment when I put off the ways of the world and put on the ways of the Kingdom, like changing a suit, but as we grow in Godliness by the power of the Holy Spirit, we become more at home in the ways of the Kingdom, less at home in the ways of the world.

There is much to love in this world. There will be mountains and roses and quiet lakes and downy woodpeckers in the new earth, and also streets, and perhaps little sidewalk cafes and people lifting a toast to the lamb on the throne. And we will share in the creator's love of this ongoing creation, as we His many children walk in a world put right at last by the Father, with Jesus on its throne.