Not home yet

As most of you should have picked up by now, I love music and there are many musicians who I love listening to. Nathan Tasker is just one of many singer-songwriters whom I have enjoyed listening to recently, since being introduced to him when he came to play an acoustic music evening at Surrey Christian Union a few years ago (he plays in DADGAD on a mahogany guitar; what more can I say ?! :)

Anyway, earlier I was catching up on his recent blog posts over lunch and I came across this particular post which really struck me:http://www.nathantasker.com/blog/entry/home-a-vegemite-sandwich-please

Do have a read, but basically he is talking about the feeling of being torn between loving both his country of birth (Australia) and the country where he currently lives (the US): "Even though I obviously don’t cease to be Australian once I land back in Nashville, it feels so much like home to me it causes me to wonder - can a person have two homes? Never fully be in one or the other, leaving a piece of your heart in both? It’s an on-going, internal tug of war."

I identify with this so much! Now, I may not have moved to a different country, but I have lived in a lot of different places. Already I have lived for substantial periods of time in 4 different towns/cities, with the way that short term job contracts in science go sadly meaning that it's probably inevitable that I'll end up moving again before too long. In each of these places I have made good friends and found a good church. In this global age, I also have several really good friends who have moved abroad or who have moved back to their home country after university. Each time I go to visit any of these friends it definitely feels, like Nathan Tasker says, that I leave a piece of my heart behind with them.

My usual reaction to this tearing of my heart is either to dwell on the memories of the visit so much that I feel really depressed/confused for a while after I return home until I settle back into a daily routine, or to just bury the feelings and try to move on, because pretending that all is ok sometimes feels like the only way of survival. But, I realise that neither of these is particularly healthy! In life, so much is a balancing act - all the way from how much of each nutrient group to have in our diet, to the line between being proud/humble. So often I swing between two extremes, in all areas of life, and I suspect that I am probably not alone in this.

But Nathan doesn't just talk about this tearing and leave it at that, but he uses it as an analogy of how actually, for those of us who know Christ, we know that we are truly citizens of heaven and that any "home" we can have on this earth is temporary. He also mentions how knowing this citizenship affects us in ways that our earthly citizenship never will.

Several Bible verses come to mind:"But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Saviour." Philippians 3:20

I love this song by Nathan Tasker which talks about this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyM1GGRNoI&feature=channel&list=UL

"Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God." Colossians3:1-3

I might also take this analogy another step, and say that actually, perhaps knowing this gives me permission to know that sometimes living in tension is ok?! I don't have to either let it depress/confuse me or try to ignore it and pretend it isn't there, but rather I can fully acknowledge the reality of it and live accordingly. Living in tension, as difficult and painful as it can be at times, is not something to be avoided but should in fact be part of our reality. And actually, tension between earthly homes, should merely serve to remind me of the tension between knowing that I am on one hand living here on earth, but am also a spiritual being, a citizen of heaven, created for more than what I see in the natural. I guess that what I have to remember, as this song by Steven Curtis Chapman reminds me, is that I am not home yet:

http://youtu.be/od3Ws-0WZuo

p.s. Oh, and did I mention that I'm REALLY excited that I'm going to see Steven Curtis Chapman live later this week?! :-D