Reality Check

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Philippians 3:20,21 NIV

Sometimes I desperately need a reality check. If you follow these blogs, you will know I tend to keep an eye on the news reports, and then try to make sense of the sad headlines. There is nothing wrong with that of course, but it is good to be refreshed by taking a step back, and seeing the bigger picture. My life and future is not all wrapped up in a newspaper headline like a fish supper. I have another outlook, and a better one at that.

The problems of government and politics, and even human suffering is not the story. At least not mine. I am here for a short while, placed in this world for a purpose and for a time which is not in my hands. My own health, or that of my family and friends concerns me, but that is not the overriding issue either. It is even bigger than that. I have a vivid memory of an older saint who was told by his doctor to set his affairs in order because he was on borrowed time, and would soon die. “No”, he told the doctor, “I’m not gonna die, I’m gonna live forever.” I loved it when I heard it, and it still stirs me now.

We don’t live here. Our passport only tells part of the story, because our real country is heaven, and our citizenship is there, if we have claimed the Saviour as ours, and accepted His great free gift of eternal life. Another old saint once told me, “Don’t let anyone, or anything get between you and heaven”. He was fighting his own very serious health problems, and was still focussed on his heavenly home. I am sure he made it!

So, while this natural world wrestles with civil wars, atrocities, inhumanity and wrongdoing on a grand scale, I take a reality check, and remind myself that I don’t belong here. As an old gospel song says, “I'm kind of homesick for a country, to which I've never been before. No sad goodbyes will there be spoken, for time won't matter anymore.… Beulah Land.” Did somebody just say ‘amen’?