Temporary Sojourning
12-23-21
(1 minute, 45 seconds)

This Christmas is the third year in a row that we are living in a different house. Though profoundly grateful to be settled again, I feel the burden of sojourning keenly.
With or without changing your address regularly, you probably know this strain as well: the weight that comes from living daily in a broken world. As we press on in broken bodies, through broken relationships, and along broken roads, it becomes more apparent with every step that this isn’t our eternal home. We are pilgrims in a foreign land, putting one foot in front of the other as we travel toward our ultimate home.
As Christmas approaches, commit afresh with me to preparing our hearts, minds, and homes for Christmas as we simultaneously set our entire hope on the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Here is hope for heavy hearts and life for weary bones: because of Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection, our sojourning won’t be forever. Heaven, the holy dwelling of the Lord Most High, is our final destination. There will be no more moving, brokenness, disappointments, insecurity, pain, offenses, anxiety, cold feet, hunger, or thirst. Joy will be overflowing and everlasting.

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Isaiah 35:10

Heavenly joy will be over many things, but our ultimate joy will be the presence of God and seeing Him face to face.

Joni Eareckson spoke recently about what she was looking forward to about heaven. As I listened, I anticipated that she would say something about joy over ditching the wheelchair that she’s been bound to as a person with quadriplegia for more than 50 years. That’s not what she said. In fact, she barely mentioned the wheelchair.
Here is what she said in an interview with Nancy Guthrie.

“You look at me in this wheelchair, paralyzed for 52 years, and most people would think, O, you’re looking forward to your new body. And yeah, that’s one of those fringe benefits. But I’m looking forward to the new heart; a heart free of manipulating others with precisely-timed phrases; a heart free of fudging the truth; a heart free from hogging the spotlight, believing my own press releases … a heart free of not believing the best of others; a heart free of caving in to fear or anxiety about the future. I can’t wait to have a heart free of sin.”

Nancy Guthrie and Joni Eareckson are two of my favorite sisters in Christ who have been given painful and unique platforms of suffering.
You can listen to the interview here where they talk about what makes heaven so heavenly.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/q-a-podcast/suffering-healing-and-the-hope-of-eternity/

A heart free of sin.
Our hearts will be free of sin and we will live eternally in the presence of God, seeing Him face to face.
Doesn’t the thought of this make the “momentary light afflictions” even lighter and the burden of sojourning seem blissfully temporary?
Temporary sojourning, then everlasting joy.