#20 This Is Our Temporary Home 2/10/10

#20                   This is not my home!                         2/20/10

They euphemistically refer to this as “transition”.  Betwixt and between, my ancestors used to say.  You see, I stay in one residence during the work-week that I don’t own and my wife stays in another one I do not own either.  Let me elaborate, we are moving to Lake Wobegon, Minnesota “where the women are strong, the men are good looking and all the kids are above average”[1] We rent a condo there while we are moving out of the home we sold to our generous employer. The Land of Ten Thousand [frozen] Lakes will only be our address for a short time because we’ve no desire to live there after we pull the plug. So, neither of these domiciles qualify as home sweet home.

Although this is the sixth such work-related transfer we made in our twenty-nine years together, this one is more unsettling than the others for some reason. After twelve mailing addresses in that time frame, it cannot be an attachment problem.  I didn’t chose to move to Chicago ten years ago so leaving Illinois is not the issue. The home I designed and built is probably the nicest I’ll ever have but I’ll forget that one as soon as I start another some day. So, what is the rub?

The moment my boss said I needed to relocate a seed of dissatisfaction was planted within me. No matter how I arranged my things about me in my little box up North, there is no comfort to be found. Last Friday night Nancy and I flew back to Midway and drove back to Frankfort and we both expressed how aware we were that we weren’t ‘going home’ traveling in either direction.

Last week Don Piper, the author of 90 Minutes in Heaven[2] spoke at Parkview Church [3] to tell his story of being pronounced dead on the scene of a head-on collision in his Ford Focus with an eighteen-wheeler and spending 90 minutes on streets of gold. Read his book or view the event at the website in the footnote below to get the details. What struck me was his dissatisfaction with being back “here” after being there. So much so that it obstructed his healing as he spent over a year in the hospital and had thirty-four surgeries. It also damaged his relationships until he accepted his job here was not finished. His problem was that he was no longer at home while on this earth because he realized his citizenship was in a land not made with hands:

Hebrews 11 (Message translation) ^13-16Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that—heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.

Piper visited the city waiting for him and he did not want to come back. He caught a glimpse of the place Jesus has prepared for us:

John 14 (New American Standard Bible)  ¹"Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.  ²"In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.  ³"If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.  ⁴"And you know the way where I am going”

So what is the “So What?” in all of this? I can’t answer that for you but for me it is okay to not feel at home anywhere on this little orb. Comfort here, in any form, should be illusive since the time we spend here pales to the eternity we’ll spend where Mr. Piper found himself after the truck ran him over. Dissatisfaction may be a great motivator to get busy doing what I should be doing.  Peter pointed forward when he explained our citizenship.  

1 Peter 2 [Message Translation] ^9-10But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God's instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.

 ^11-12Friends, this world is not your home, so don't make yourselves cozy in it. Don't indulge your ego at the expense of your soul. Live an exemplary life among the natives so that your actions will refute their prejudices. Then they'll be won over to God's side and be there to join in the celebration when he arrives.

I pray you will be uncomfortable and dissatisfied all your days here on earth.

---

[1] Lake Wobegon [pronounced like Woebegone] is the fictional small town in Minnesota that Garrison Keillor created to represent the town he grew up in for A Prairie Home Companion a nationally syndicated radio program produced on Minnesota Public Radio prairiehome.publicradio.org/

[2] w 90 Minutes in Heaven, Revell (September 1, 2004)

[3] you can view this event at  parkviewchurch.com and go to the archives of services