13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
—Hebrews 11:13-16
Be honest. When was the last time you spent more than a fleeting few seconds thinking about heaven, much less allowing your heart the time and intemperance to actually desire it? Hopefully not, but perhaps you’re like me and it’s been awhile, a long while, longer than you can even recall. This morning, randomly (miraculously?), I’ve given it some thought. And while I’m by no means a guru on this subject or any, the Spirit has moved me enough to crack my laptop and write.
Another question: are there ever instances in this hectic, harried life when you stop, look around you at everyone and everything else whizzing past you a hundred miles an hour, and realize, in a moment of almost profound clarity, ‘I’m not from here’? I have, and I’ll admit, it’s eerie, even unsettling—so much so that my response is to quickly settle back into the ‘trance of the temporal’ I inhabited before being jarred from it.
Bumper-sticker junkie –noun, 1. One who is overly infatuated with bumper stickers, not so much so that their personal automobile is covered with them, but so much so that upon identifying their outline on another’s bumper they hit the gas as hard as necessary to get a better look. 2. See previous definition.
I am a bumper-sticker junkie. I take notice of any and all of them whenever I’m behind the wheel. Many I see nowadays are the Christian, ‘Not of This World’ logo (note: normally these are NOT adjacent to the classic, ‘Keep Honking…I’m Reloading). Don’t get me wrong—this one has a cool design and is artfully edgy—but it loses some of its punch when you look a little lower and realize its plastered on a Cadillac Escalade.
I’m not being a hater here—I have no right to be. The sticker is a start. It just can’t be the end. In the passage above the writer of Hebrews recaps reality for those highlighted in what’s referred to as the Hall of Faith. He makes a distinction about the life of people like Abraham, Noah, Joseph, even Enoch: their sandals would have aptly displayed, ‘Not of This World.’ They had a heartbeat for heaven. Out of it sprang other-worldly hope. And this hope was the very means by which they overcame the trials they encountered, the things of this world: injustice, ridicule, uncertainty, fear.
In all the instances where God allowed the people of Israel to be exiled from their homeland (there were many), there existed one common thread: ultimately there grew within the hearts of His people a strong desire to return home. At a point, they looked around their Gentile surroundings and fully realized they were strangers in a foreign land, not meant to stay there. They were God’s people, His elect, and He had prepared a place for them.
So it is with us.
C.S. Lewis wrote about hope (having a heart for heaven) as a theological virtue, in his renowned classic, Mere Christianity. I’ll conclude with it. But before I do, let me exhort us to live a life worthy of God’s calling (and worthy of the sticker). May we STOP, long enough to let our minds marinate on heaven…and mostly on Who’s there. Enough of this will incline our hearts toward hope—just the thing we need to run this raucous race in such a way as to get the prize.
Grace to you, to put away the Earthly glaze for a Heavenly gaze,
Voice of another
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Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.
-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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