I’ve got the weekly email devotional of Max Lucado in my mailbox today. I love reading informal emails during my daily work. Lucado wrote that “homesickness is one of the burdens God doesn’t mind if we carry.” I had to reread it before I fully realized what he was saying. I know how it feels to be homesick. Years ago my parents went on their annual, well deserved holiday together. For every child they found a place to stay for that few days. I had the honour to stay at my grand-aunt’s home in the big city Rotterdam. We were used to visit her regularly during the years and she made our stays like a party for us. We went to the zoo, to big play gardens and all things like that. I always enjoyed staying at my grand-aunts home. But this time it was different. From the moment my parents left the apartment of my auntie, that particular feeling in my body began to grow. It feels like being  quite nervous, a bit ill or a little homeless. It started as a very small ‘thing’ in my belly, but grew and grew, until it was too big to bear for a little girl. The diagnosis was not hard to establish: I was homesick. Everybody who had ever suffered homesickness knows that the only helpful treatment is to go home and to be with your beloved ones.

When I grew up, I suffered homesickness less frequently, at least not this kind of homesickness. But many times I suffer from the kind of homesickness Max Lucado wrote about today. The bible talks about ’setting eternity in the hearts of men.’ (Eccl 3:11) That is the reason for my homesickness nowadays. I know this world is not my home and in my heart a longing grows to be at home. To be at the place I have never been. To be at the place I am made for. This is the feeling God doesn’t mind I suffer from. He wants me to know this is not my home. He wants me to know that I am a visitor, a foreigner on this earth.

The bible says about believers: “They were looking forward to a better home in heaven. That’s why God wasn’t ashamed for them to call him their God. He even built a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:16) I am looking forward to stay at this heavenly home.

Corine