This world is not my home I'm just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. Oh lord you know I have no friend like you. If heaven's not my home then Lord what will I do? The angels beckon me from heaven's open door and I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
This hymn is in many church's song books and is sang throughout congregations during worship assemblies, but have we ever really listened to the words that seem to be robotically coming from our mouths without even thinking? Do we for one second believe the above paragraph that we are proclaiming to God?
“This world is not my home I'm just a passing through.” If this world is NOT my home, why do we as Christians act like it is? Why do we focus all our attention on school, sports, and extracurricular activities? We place all of our attention on fleeting things, things that will fade as fast as a vapor, things that in five years will have little to no effect on our lives. In five years no one will really care that we got a 3.789 GPA and made the President’s list all four years. No one in five years will care that you won the conference championship, and no one will care that you were in X number of clubs in high school and college. We claim that this world is not our home, but we get into disagreements and arguments that end in the loss of friendships or church family over ball games, politics, and opinions. If the claim that this world is not our home is true, why are we so caught up in worldly things? We are so often focused on fitting in, being popular, being accepted, getting the best grades, having the highest paying job, but my question is where does Christ fit into this? With our minds focused on these things, where do we make time to becoming Christ-like?
This world is a great place, please don't misunderstand me. God created this as a place for us to "live and move and have our being,” but He did not create this as our final resting place--as our forever home. John 14:2-4 states, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Heaven is going to be a beautiful place with no tears, no grief, no dying, no pain, no sickness, no evil. Heaven will be a place of happiness, joy, peace, eternity, worship, a place that we cannot begin to fathom. Imagine the earth and realize that it only took God seven days to make it, now try to imagine a place that God has been preparing for thousands of years and imagine how glorious that place will be.
This year has shown me how wicked the world can be, how harmful people can be, and how sad and hopeless the world can make you feel. And, speaking for myself, I cannot feel at home in this world anymore. This place that God created is here for a job, one specific purpose, one that isn't necessarily supposed to be fun, but one that is supposed to be for Him. This earth was created for the ultimate purpose of magnifying God’s infinite mercy, not for going to school, not for being happy, not for building ourselves up. This world is created to bring souls to our Savior, to magnify His name, not ours.
This world cannot feel like home because it isn’t and never will be. If this place feels like home, then we aren't doing something right. Mark 13:13 states, "And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved." We must be constantly trying to work toward home. Home is where the angels beckon me from heaven's open door and where God wraps me in His unchanging hands and where the blue skies and rainbows never fade. The question remains: are you at home or can you not feel at home in this world anymore?
