I’m homesick, guys. With all the travel and immigration restrictions, my soul is longing for a place it can’t go, for the family I left behind, for a life we planned but may not have now.

If you didn’t know, I’m an American expat (I think of myself as an alien–it’s cooler). I’ve lived in Ontario nearly 12 years, and I love Canada.

But there’s something special about being in one’s home country.

I sense it when I drive to the Buffalo airport. Just switching from the QEW to I-90 releases a tension I feel every day I’m away. I’m in the land of my birth. I’m home.

But here’s what God reminded me of when I cried about being homesick.

Even if I were to go back to Missouri, back to Kansas City where I was born–the homiest of homes–I still wouldn’t be home. Not really.

Because I’m not actually FROM this world.

None of us are.

Jesus said it (John 17:14; 18:36).
Paul said it (Phil 2:20; Eph 2:19).

We’re citizens of Heaven, our spirits on an earthly adventure for both business and pleasure.

We get to sojourn here for a bit to fulfill our purpose and experience life, then return to a perfect home with a perfect Father in a perfect world.

I’m thousands of miles and potentially years away from setting foot in the country of my birth again. And my soul tingles with the expectation of that border crossing. That sense of home.

But, oh, how much greater will the homecoming be when I cross that border between life and death and set foot on my true native soil in Heaven?

That unnamed grief you’re feeling in this wild, weird time? It could be homesickness. For your true home. Your heavenly native land. Where there is no sickness, no death, no fear.

Take a moment today and ask Jesus to let you peek over the border and get a glimpse of home. Ask him to remind you of where you truly belong–not in this broken world, but in Heaven with him.