Out of Sync & Homeless

It's been an unusual week for me... sort of like everything's been slightly out of sync or something. I'm not sure how to describe it except to say that it's been a bit like watching a movie when the sound doesn't quite match and you don't hear the words until a second or two after you see the characters' mouths move.

I've been trying to put my finger on it, and here's what I've come up with: I'm feeling incredibly incomplete without my wife. There are 2300 miles between us right now, and I'm missing her and our kids so much. I've come to realize in a really tangible way just how much a part of me Margo is. Yet here I am forging new friendships, beginning a new ministry, living in a new place... all without my best friend, my bride, and a big part of myself.

In a way, it's kind of a lonely feeling. Don't get me wrong; I'm surrounded with terrific people who have gone out of their way to make me feel right at home. The folks at Hope are really a family, and they've included me in that remarkable warmth and kindess. But, in a way, I can't really move on with my life without Margo, Ben, Beth, and Becky. So as I make new friends and discover the nooks and crannies of my new town, part of me is still in the desert on the other side of the country.

Add to that the fact that I don't really have a home. I'm living in a great home with an incredible family (Note to self: I need to post something about the Stamps family... they're amazing!). I also have a home back in Phoenix. But neither of those is really home yet, if that makes sense. I feel a bit nomadic and uprooted.

Tonight, as I said goodnight to Margo on the phone, I was thinking a bit about this sense of "homelessness." You know, Jesus didn't have a place to call home, either. (Luke 9:58) He left it all behind to take the life-changing power of God's love to the world. First, he left behind heaven and its glory to become one of us. Then he left his earthly family to wander around Jerusalem and Galilee teaching and serving. He didn't even have a home of his own to go back to. I'm sure there were times at the end of a long day of healing the sick and challenging the hypocrites when Jesus would have liked to go home, kick off his sandals, and just hang out on the couch. But he didn't enjoy that luxury. He skipped out on the comforts of home by choice. He lived this way — this awkward, out-of-sync, lonely, uprooted life — because he loves us and desires so much for us to be free of this life.

Then he calls us to follow in his footsteps. Leave the stuff of this life behind because it really doesn't matter all that much. Nothing is more important than loving people, and certainly not our comfortable couch in our nice homes where we can kick off our sandals. Not even our family outweighs the privilege of following in Jesus' footsteps. Ponder Luke 14:26-28 for a while if you want to be humbled: "If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison — our father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters — yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. But don’t begin until you count the cost."

And then, just when that sense of lonely, noble, and even holy loneliness hits you, chew on this promise from Jesus in John 14:1-3, "Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am."

Forty-two years ago, a guy named Albert Brumley tried to put this idea to music, and that old tune is echoing in my thoughts as I head to bed tonight:

This world is not my home, I'm just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door,
and I can't feel at home in this world anymore.