All of us need to lock arms with a group of comrades who will inspire and encourage us and challenge us to greater accomplishments for God’s kingdom causes. That’s why we all desperately need to be part of a local church where God’s Word is taught and God’s Son is worshiped (Hebrews 10:25). Hebrews shows how today’s churches can trace their heritage back to the ancient body of Christ and heroes of the faith throughout the ages.
Michael Griffiths wrote God’s Forgetful Pilgrims, in which he maintains that the church has largely forgotten her wondrous identity in Christ and has settled for the world’s substitute identities. I came across the original British edition of the book, which had a more striking title: Cinderella with Amnesia. As children of God, we are prized by the Prince, chosen by Him to reign at His side (1 Peter 2:9). Yet, beautiful and beloved as we are to the Prince, we go right on—like Cinderella with amnesia—living in drudgery as citizens of a second-class country, forfeiting heavenly treasures by clinging to earthly ones.
Back in Kansas, with her experience in the land of Oz behind her, Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home.” How true! But how easily we forget where our home really is. At death, the Christian doesn’t leave home. We go home: “We . . . prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). Consider the paradox—our true home is a place we’ve never been! (Had we been there we could hardly bear to live here.)
Home is where our Father is. Our true home is so far superior, the spiritual family there so vast and rich. The Great Reunion awaits us. We long for it.
When we understand what home really is, money and things lose their glitter. We finally see them as they have been all along: pale, insipid, cheap imitations of the true and vast wealth that is ours as children of God.
C. S. Lewis puts it well: “Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
For more on the subject of stewardship and eternity, see Randy's books The Treasure Principle, Managing God's Money, and Money, Possessions, and Eternity.
Photo: Unsplash
