It’s almost time to travel again, so I pull our passport pouch out of the safe to check the expiration dates. There are eight of them: eight passports with eight different expiration dates, each one representing an eight-hour trip to the capital city where we stand in long lines to process the renewals. 

That’s the bad news.  

The good news is that the eight passports represent just the four members of my immediate family, each one of us with dual citizenship. Our second passports weren’t exactly easy to come by; they’re the result of marriage or adoption, followed by filling out reams of documents and sitting through hours of interviews over the course of several years. But these eight passports are proof of the fact that we have a home on either end of our travels.

Trips are often exciting, but constant travel over the course of a lifetime can be wearisome, even if there is a home waiting on both sides of the trip. 

I marvel at a very brave man who stepped out in faith on the trip of a lifetime when God told Abraham to “leave your country and your people and go to the land I will show you.” (Gen. 12:1) He had no idea where he was going, there was no home prepared for him ahead of time on the other end, and he, his wife, and their whole crew had to live in tents on the way there! 

Abraham was able to overlook the sorrow of saying goodbye, the wearisome years of traveling an unknown path, of living in a tent instead of a real house, because he had his eyes set on the promise: a city with real foundations, designed and built by God himself. 

I look at the eight passports spilled out on my bed, and I’m grateful for the two homes they represent, yet I’m tired of the long-distance trips they require. I’m tired of the goodbyes. 

But I will follow Abraham’s example, setting my eyes on the promise of that beautiful city built with permanent foundations by God’s own hands. How thankful I am that my passport into that city will never expire!