Living in Light of That Heavenly Country
By JORDAN ECARMA
I’m realizing I need to worry a little less about the difference I’m making in the world.
Let me take a step back and explain what I mean with that conclusion. Like anyone else’s, my Christian life goes through cycles and seasons as God leads me down new paths or reteaches me old lessons. Last year, He taught me that surrendering my own plans meant being taken in glorious new directions. “Content to fill a little space,” I am happily doing work for the kingdom.
But lately, I’ve been reminded that the most important thing is not the difference I make in this world, but the marks it leaves on me … how my life experiences shape my eternal soul.
I can work my hardest every day for the causes I think will help the kingdom, offer my best words of wisdom to other believers and stand on principle for what I believe. But even in the heat of battle, I have to remember that God has given me this one thing for which I will be held accountable. What would it profit me to gain success in the world (even if that means furthering Christian causes) but to lose my own soul?
I periodically have to remember that we aren’t supposed to feel safe here. We’ll never make this world over into somewhere Christians fit perfectly because we were never supposed to belong here in the first place.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis gives us a beautiful reminder that we don’t belong here because we were designed for “a better, a heavenly country.”
Like a key fits to a lock, we will each find a unique place in heaven to be home in a way we never could be here on Earth.
“God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.”
As Christians, we miss our real home … even if we haven’t been to it yet.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 14 For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. 15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
Jordan Ecarma is a former journalist now living the millennial dream: getting paid for writing Facebook statuses (that is, digital PR). She watches her use of the f-word (“feminism”) around conservatives and the c-word (“conservatism”) around feminists. Find her under @JordanEcarma.
