Hebrews11:13-16 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

 This earth; not my real home.  I am a stranger, just visiting for a short while. That was obvious to the Hebrews of Biblical times, and it is so obvious to me today!

I know Heaven is my true home. I know God’s word teaches I am an alien to this world, just passing thru, as the verse above states. As a believer, I have understood that on an intellectual level for a very long time. But now, now that Grant is gone, gone to our real eternal home, this truly doesn’t feel like home anymore. I am filled with longing and pangs of homesickness for the place I truly belong. Does that sound morbid to you? Does it sound like a death wish? It shouldn’t.

This pain of losing Grant, and trying to build a life without him, is a daily reminder that this is not my true home. The death of a loved one makes Heaven a sweeter place, if that’s even possible. And knowing Grant’s home already, makes me long for my true home in a way I never could before.

We get attached to things here.  And our affections for those things tie us to this earth. But when something we love so much has gone home, our affections go with it in a sense, and we long for that place they have gone to. When I think of Heaven now, it’s not a daydream or a pleasant diversion, or an escape from my pain. It’s hope, it’s my spiritual sanity. It’s a place where there will be comfort, relief, refreshment, unspeakable joy, reunion. A place of no more sorrow, no more pain; it will be home, my true home, my eternal home.