Have you ever turned on the TV and watched some news cast about something that just seems like it had to have happened on another world? Over the past week or so, we've been hearing about tornadoes doing things like wiping out entire towns, which isn't as big of news as it could be, since we've been exposed to this kind of thing more frequently than we would like to have been lately.
While we may only get these thoughts every once in a while, one of the things I've started to notice is that this world feels more and more like a strange place. Or maybe, to phrase it better, I feel like a stranger in this world. So much happens that just seems wrong, or it takes on a movie-like feeling when I watch the news, and I feel like I'm the stranger in this world.
In one way, that probably makes a lot of sense. After all, when God created this world for us humans to live on, He created it perfectly. There was nothing wrong with it at all. We fit right in. We even find, in the early chapters of Genesis, that the animals of the world didn't fear the first man, who had them all brought to him so that he could name them all.
Once the darkness of sin and the shadow of death entered, though, this world became a strange place. In order to save His special creation, humankind, God saved them from the curse that should have been placed on them, and instead, He placed that curse on the world. The world would no longer be a safe, familiar place for humans to live in. Instead, we humans would have to fight with it for the things we would need to sustain our lives.
Because of all of that, we are now strangers in a strange land. While we will wrestle with the strangeness of our world, and while we recognize that we are strangers here, the one thing that God wants us to know is that things will not always be like this. Jesus has come to rescue us from this strange world that is bound for death and for re-creation. He has rescued us from our sin, and part of that promise means that we will inherit a new land, one in which we will not be strangers.
I don't know about you, but as long as we live in a world that has fallen under God's curse and the curse of sin, I'm rather glad to think that I'm a stranger here, and that my true home lies somewhere else, a place that God has promised to all who believe in Jesus' sacrifice for them. I look forward to the day when Jesus Himself gets to say to me, "Welcome home!"
While we may only get these thoughts every once in a while, one of the things I've started to notice is that this world feels more and more like a strange place. Or maybe, to phrase it better, I feel like a stranger in this world. So much happens that just seems wrong, or it takes on a movie-like feeling when I watch the news, and I feel like I'm the stranger in this world.
In one way, that probably makes a lot of sense. After all, when God created this world for us humans to live on, He created it perfectly. There was nothing wrong with it at all. We fit right in. We even find, in the early chapters of Genesis, that the animals of the world didn't fear the first man, who had them all brought to him so that he could name them all.
Once the darkness of sin and the shadow of death entered, though, this world became a strange place. In order to save His special creation, humankind, God saved them from the curse that should have been placed on them, and instead, He placed that curse on the world. The world would no longer be a safe, familiar place for humans to live in. Instead, we humans would have to fight with it for the things we would need to sustain our lives.
Because of all of that, we are now strangers in a strange land. While we will wrestle with the strangeness of our world, and while we recognize that we are strangers here, the one thing that God wants us to know is that things will not always be like this. Jesus has come to rescue us from this strange world that is bound for death and for re-creation. He has rescued us from our sin, and part of that promise means that we will inherit a new land, one in which we will not be strangers.
I don't know about you, but as long as we live in a world that has fallen under God's curse and the curse of sin, I'm rather glad to think that I'm a stranger here, and that my true home lies somewhere else, a place that God has promised to all who believe in Jesus' sacrifice for them. I look forward to the day when Jesus Himself gets to say to me, "Welcome home!"
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