Living overseas, so many times felt like a game of Marco Polo in the deep end. Relationally, people around me called, “Marco!” Yet my options felt like I could only tread furiously, or be a fish out of water.  

Whether in my home country or passport country, I felt disconnected—though most people were paddling around, having a great time.

Living overseas has forever changed how I see the world, how I interact with my own culture. But I don’t fit in at “home”, either. 

As one global worker muses, “No matter how incorporated you are into the culture, no matter how good your ministry, no matter how accepted that you are by the people…you’re not one of ‘them’.”

We straddle two countries geographically, and within. And sometimes, it feels like no one, anywhere, really knows us. Gets us. Fully embraces all of us.

C.S. Lewis’ words capture this longing exquisitely.

“But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory…becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” (The Weight of Glory, 8 June, 1942, emphasis added)

Welcome into the heart of things. Is there any global worker who doesn’t long for a home for her soul? To be known and responded to? 

As lovers of Jesus, we are “foreigners and aliens in this world” (1 Peter 2:11). And because Jesus is preparing a perfect place for us, no relationship on Planet Earth’s going to measure up. 

But even here, in the shadowlands, we are intimately known: “Now my heart has found a home”. Someone calls out “Marco!” for the innermost me. 

“I have called you by name; you are mine.” (Isaiah 43:1)

“I have called you friends.” (John 15:15)

“The Lord knows those who are His.” (2 Timothy 2:19)

“Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) 

And I can respond, being even more known than I know myself.