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Like many of you I suspect, my family and I attend church in a language other than English. We love our church family, and as our French language abilities have improved, we’ve become more able to participate in worship on a heart level.
A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to attend a different church in our city. Their service being bilingual, all words were spoken in French and English; we sang some songs in one language and some in the other. At the chorus of one of the songs, the worship leader instructed us to sing in our heart language, and on the screens appeared the words of the refrain in several of the most common languages in the church, English and French obviously among them.
Because we previously lived in a Spanish-speaking country, seeing Spanish as one of the language options on the screen made feelings of nostalgia well up in my heart. We regularly sang this particular song in Spanish in our previous country. I heard myself singing the chorus in Spanish, not English, feeling drawn to this brief opportunity to worship God in another language that had become near and dear to my heart. And in that moment, I was confronted anew with a reality that many of us experience, the reality of the fluid concept of home.
But as we dig into the Scriptures and understand more about who we are in Christ, isn’t that exactly the point? That our concept of home must be fluid here on this earth, that perhaps feeling a heart tug at the opportunity to sing in a variety of languages reminds us that our citizenship lies in heaven, a place where people of all nations and tongues will come together in praise of King Jesus.
Philippians 3:20 affirms that our citizenship is in heaven. Because of the work that our Savior did on the cross, we no longer have the status of foreigner and stranger (how many of us feel like foreigners and strangers on a daily basis?!) but of fellow citizens with God’s people (Ephesians 2:19). May we live full lives on this earth and yet never forget that we truly are citizens of a heavenly country!
When you acutely feel like a foreigner in the country in which you live, are you more likely to despair at those feelings or to use those feelings to point yourself to your heavenly citizenship? If the former reaction better describes you, what encouragements from God’s Word can you draw upon to lead you to the latter reaction?
My response probably depends on the day. If I’m having a relatively good day, I might let these moments of struggle nudge me to ponder my union with Christ and my heavenly citizenship. But if I’m having a particularly bad day or feeling down about myself or my cross-cultural “performance” in that moment, I’m much more likely to despair at the prospect of “never feeling at home anywhere.” The verses I referenced in the devotion, among many others of course, serve as great encouragement when I need reminding of what is absolutely true.