My wife and I are in our second season of trying to live in two places at once.  When we finished with the first one, we committed ourselves to NEVER do it again.  But here we are, once more trying to live in two places at the same time.  God has guided her to minister at a church in one part of the state, and me in another part, two hours driving away.  We split our time between her parsonage and the house we own, which is near my congregation.

When I was in college, I liked to listen to “radio theater of the absurd,” a nerdy subculture of humorous but deeply intellectual audio skits.  One of them, by a group called Firesign Theatre, was entitled “How Can You Be Two Places at Once, When You’re Not Anywhere at All?”  The title (and most of the content) was intended to be a logical contradiction, but it almost perfectly describes how we feel at times.  We spend significant parts of each day trying to figure out at which house we’ve left something.  We sometimes wake up at night and don’t know which way to go to get to the bathroom.  We kind of get to a point where it feels surreal, and that we really don’t have any place to call home.  We feel like we’re almost in some sort of limbo – not really anywhere at all…

As I was driving between the two houses for the sixth time in two weeks, I reflected on the way this describes the Christian experience, at times.  We Christians often find ourselves working hard to serve others and make ourselves feel more at home here in this world, but we know our real home is in heaven.  Paul expressed a similar feeling when he told the Philippians,

“If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know!  I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body.” (Philippians 1:22-24)

The hardest part, by far, is that we have a home about which we know and for which we yearn, but we aren’t there yet.  Like my wife and I hoping eventually to live in our home, and only our home, as Christians, many of us are here trying to serve and encourage and grow while we have a very different place in our hearts that we prefer.

Joyfully, it appears that the Lord is pleased with such a yearning.  I appreciate the words written by the author of Hebrews, who speaks at length about people who have walked in faith, but hadn’t yet found their promised place.  In Hebrews 11, we read these words:  “… 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. (Hebrews 11:16)  I encourage you to read the rest of the passage to see the kind of world in which they lived with this hope.  It’s not unlike ours.

I know our personal lives are filled with all kinds of pulls and distractions.  Sometimes the news can be enough to make us just want to quit this place altogether and move “home.”  As I’ve learned to live (kind of) in two places at once, I know where my heart is.  I also know that the hope I have as I live here is enough to keep me going until then.

Let us all look forward to our heavenly home, as we work here in this “foreign land.”  God is pleased to strengthen and encourage us as we do, and to welcome us home when the time comes.