What tops your list when you consider the sacrifices of living overseas? I'll share with you a few of mine...

A longing to be with those I know and who know me.

A desire for belonging and familiar connection.

An ache for my true home.

I wonder how Jesus would have identified with these sacrifices.

I imagine there must have been times when Jesus felt homesick for heaven

And ached to be with His Father

At rest in His true home

The way He had before He walked our dusty streets

And faced disappointing those who hoped for something different from Him

And experienced disappointment by the lack of faith in His followers

All those times when He was misunderstood and accused of being a blasphemer

Leading up to His final walk to Calvary

Where He paid the ultimate sacrifice for us.

But before the cross, God led Him, along with three of His closest friends, up a mountaintop and pulled aside the curtain separating heaven and earth. Moses and Elijah appeared and talked with Jesus, whose appearance had become dazzingly transfigured. And God's voice split the heavens, “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!”

Ken Gire writes in Moments With the Savior, “How Jesus must have longed to step off that mountain and go with these kindred spirits back to heaven, to return home to his Father and to the honor that was rightfully his. He could have been swept from earth as Elijah had been by a chariot of fire. He could have been delivered as Moses had by a miraculous exodus.

But no chariot comes to whisk him away from his circumstances. No miracles come to provide a way out of his suffering.

How ironic, the three of them standing there together. He who is the fulfillment of the Law and Prophets stands between the greatest lawgiver and the greatest prophet, to be filled by them. Encouraged by them. Strengthened by them.”

How compassionate of God to give Jesus this comforting companionship before He descended the mountain and returned to the “real world” where His disciples would argue over who was the greatest. And those same three who witnessed His transfiguration would fall asleep on the night when He sweated blood in agony, begging His Father to take the cup from Him. Yet, He was able to proclaim, not His will but God’s be done.

And so with us. We long to live a life of surrendered obedience, following Him wherever He may lead, with or without fellow travelers.

Because Jesus’ heart ached in much the same way that our hearts ache with sacrifice and homesickness, He offers us His comforting companionship that we can find in no one else.