Day 6 of the 40 Days of Purpose

“Life Is a Temporary Assignment”

There is a song with these lyrics:

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.

The first line is biblical, “This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through.”

Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. (1 Pet 1:17 NIV)

The great ones of faith from the Old Testament in the “Faith Hall of Fame Chapter” are said to be people who realized by faith that they were just passing through to a better place.

All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. {14} People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. {15} If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. {16} Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Heb 11:13-16 NIV)

The rest of the song is a bit more difficult for me, for it goes beyond Bible information to personal conviction. I take the song as applying to when it is time to die, “The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,” and our attitude about this world when that time will come. I think we would all agree that we want to be ready on that day and feel that we have “laid up treasures in heaven.” But the truth of the matter, for me any way, is that I have a difficult time, as much as I look with longing to my heavenly home, I still feel at home here. I love my wife and daughters, and although I am eager to go to heaven, I very much like home here, too. I think that is why even faithful Christian brothers and sisters dying in terrible pain longing to be freed from this world of pain and sorrow to go home to be with God, still want to hang on to their family here as long as they can. That’s not a weakness of faith. I don’t think God intended for us to not be at home here, but to live with the reality that home here is just temporary. This whole earth will be destroyed and we wait for a new heaven and a new earth.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. {11} Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives {12} as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. {13} But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. (2 Pet 3:10-13 NIV)

Knowing this, my longing for my eternal home is approached with trying to live properly in this home and in relationship with everyone in it. For some day I will stand before my judge and put aside the earthly for the heavenly. It is not that being here with the people I love stops being home, rather it becomes my temporary home in preparation for an eternal home.

Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands….So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Cor 5:1, 9-10 NIV)

David