Going Home?

Well, it’s the day before we leave Ukraine for a whole year. We have spent the day running around, packing, cleaning, talking on the telephone and saying goodbyes. Yesterday, we had tea with some of the faculty and staff of the seminary. It has been a pleasure for me (Alfie) to serve with them. Today, we met with our small group for the last time. We studied the Bible then had some more goodbyes. It’s a strange feeling. We are definitely foreigners in Ukraine but I often feel very much at home. In fact right now I feel like I am leaving home for a year. However, I say, “We are going home for a year.” In some ways I do feel at home in the states but, in other ways I now often feel like a foreigner in the states. When I understand what everyone says (in California), I feel out of place. When I don’t understand everything (In Odessa), I feel very much at home. These last five years have changed this family in many ways. We leave Ukraine with heavy hearts. We will miss our friends, our apartment, our ministries and some of us will miss the cat. However, we look forward to being “home” again. We look forward with joyful hearts to seeing family, friends and ministries we used to be part of.

When Peter exhorts his readers to abstain form the desires of the flesh he calls them aliens and exiles (1Pe 2:11). Paul says that our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20). I am realizing that I don’t feel at home in the US or Ukraine because I’m not home. My home is in heaven and even if my mind doesn’t realize it, my soul feels it. All of us who follow Christ are aliens and strangers on earth, but someday we will be home with the Lord. We look forward to that day. John the apostle described the homecoming scene in heaven in Revelation 7:9-10. He described a multitude of people from every nation, tribe, people and tongue praising God together. That is what my soul longs for. I get glimpses of it here in Ukraine in the midst of fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I get glimpses of it in the US with my brothers and sisters in Christ. So, depending on how you look at it, we are either leaving home to go home or we are foreigners going back to the last place we were foreigners. Either way it is easier to leave here and go to the US when I realize that both places are just a shadow of our real home. And we know that some day the Lord will bring us home to the place He has prepared for us and we will know the joy that we have tasted here in earth.