Have you ever lived in or visited a foreign country where everything you encounter is different from what you experience at home?  The language, the food, the customs are all unfamiliar, making even the most simple tasks difficult.   You may not know, what you’re buying because the labels are indiscernible or struggled to describe your destination to an Uber driver.  Some customs such as television standards (pornography), laws (anti-religious conversion) and business practices (bribes) may be repulsive when they’re initially encountered.  Eventually, if you stay in the country long enough, it’s easy to accept the new standards and overlook them because they’re so common or part of everyday life.  You live in a new normal because the country has become your home away from home.

This can often be true in our Christian life as well.  At conversion, we become foreigners and aliens, pilgrims and sojourners (Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 1:17, 2:11) regardless of our nationality because our ultimate home is in heaven (Philippians 3:20).  We learn the standards of our new home, but live in day-to-day life in a foreign land creating tension between God’s commands and our culture’s reality. Many of us, especially in middle class America, we’ve too easily accepted our earthly home and become comfortable.  We become satisfied and complacent as we seek earthly rewards by from climbing the corporate ladder or getting our child into the perfect college. We daydream about our next vacation, get consumed by Christmas shopping and eagerly await the latest and greatest cell phone model.  Likewise, injustice is something we acknowledge, but don’t act on because the problems are too big for us to have any impact.  With the worldly culture and its standards, it’s easy to end up losing a clear vision of our true home because it seems so distant from us.

In the 2020 U.S., rarely do we groan with the earth (Romans 8:22) because of our corruption and cry out, “How long, O Lord?” as we struggle. We don’t look forward to our next life because we’re comfortable with this one, which reminds us of Jesus’ warning that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter heaven.  We, the rich of both the current time and world history, have no urgency, no pressing need to seek first the kingdom or cry out to be saved from our oppression.  Our resources are often too great and control too strong to need God to make it through the day. We don’t struggle with Paul’s tension when he said, “I’d rather be with the Lord…” (Philippians 1:23)

This challenge isn’t true for much of the world. As a a Christian in North Korea, pastor in China or new convert in Saudi Arabia, your perspective would be much different. They’re calling out daily, hourly “How long, O Lord?” (Psalm 13:1) and long constantly for Jesus’ return to heal the broken world and bring our true home in heaven. This isn’t true for most of history as our forbearers struggled daily to provide for their family or avoid sickness.

The past year of a global pandemic has brought the brokenness of the world easily visible with fear of the virus, loss of jobs, racial tension and riots from Minnesota to Washington DC. They should serve as daily reminders to call out “How long, O Lord?” that our individual and collective sin might be brought to justice and we restored to our true home at peace with God through Christ. (Romans 5:1-11)

Note: written in 2021, but published in 2023