Moving on Up

Back in the 50s is when my father and mother-in-law migrated from Canada – first to Missouri where dad was the Vice-President of a Bible College and then to Dallas, Texas where he continued to pastor churches for more than 50+ years. Along with them, came all of dad’s siblings. That’s the family I first met and grew to love when I met their son, my boy friend at age 13 (I was 12).

So, here we are, many decades later and the “call from the South” beckons the children of the siblings. In this case, it is my husband’s uncle and aunt’s children and their children. It started with their two daughters (both, attorneys) who moved to North Dakota and are serving there. As of yesterday, however, Karlei has placed her stake in the ground here in Austin.

One of these photos represents Karlei’s immediate family, some of my son’s family, and me for her swearing-in ceremony where she pledged her oath as an attorney for the State Bar of Texas by Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett. We were a mighty proud and happy group of cheerleaders. Soon Karlei will be living and working here.  I’ve got a feeling the rest of the family won’t be far behind!

As I thought about this blog, I considered the longing in our hearts for a land that supersedes the longing for earth-bound lands. That’s my mother-in-law who every day asks the Lord for this to be the day she gets to go home to heaven. The things of this earth have grown strangely dim for her. I understand that longing a little. Still, I have work to do, people to love and help others desire for heaven too!

So, if the bus for heaven pulled up outside the front doors of your home today and was leaving in five minutes, would you get on? That seems like it ought to be an easy one, right? Who wouldn’t get on the bus for heaven?! But, it only takes a couple seconds of thought to want to be at a swearing-in-ceremony or an upcoming wedding or a birth that tugs on us to stay here.

Yet we’re talking about HEAVEN! It makes me very grateful that God doesn’t ask us to make the decision about when we’d like to go to heaven! He makes it! And His ways and His timing are always perfect.

But, like our Canadian family who long for the South, there is quandary about living on earth and going to heaven. The Apostle Paul writes about that longing. He writes about how we are wasting away in this world. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

But in chapter 5, Paul confesses Christian hope: “We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal home in heaven.” Paul compares life in this world to tenting, but heaven he calls a building. Actually, we don’t live in tents.

We might have a tent and use it occasionally. It’s good for a weekend or a week. But after a week in a tent, we miss home. We miss that place with a roof that doesn’t leak and hot-running water and indoor plumbing and a refrigerator and an air-conditioner. That’s the building with a permanent and solid foundation that doesn’t feel like it’s going to blow away when the wind blows. For Paul and us we realize this life is the tent, heaven is the home.

It’s okay to want to go to heaven. But until that day, we must live in this world and do our best to help others want to go there with us.

There is no bus to heaven outside the doors this morning, but one day we will all make the trip. Until that day determined by God alone, we will live each day trusting that God’s promise of heaven is sure, and Christ’s work to get us there is sufficient. And in that faith, we live on earth…and long for heaven.