A dear hurting woman and wife of a pastor from a church Ashley and I spent time with recently told me the secret to her joy in the midst of profound physical pain—the kind of pain that won’t go away and impacts her everyday life. When I asked her what God has most taught her through her pain journey, she said this:
God gives everyone something to remind them this isn’t their home.
I think of her words most days, tossing them around like pennies I’m shining. Can this be true? Are difficult things a special gift of remembrance and a whisper, if we chose to hear it, that we’re made for another world?
What if I thought of it like this: all the things that go wrong, all the hurting spots, and all the things we all struggle with serve as signposts and reminders. We’re made for heaven. This is isn’t home. Thank you, Lord.
In fact, another hurting friend (it seems like the older I get, the more suffering I learn about), told me what she most needs from me is to help her remember that heaven is real. So I’ve quoted John 14 to her twice in these last few days. Jesus comforts us with the most beautiful words:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
And, of course, I often read Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians where he talks precisely about how to encourage others in this way:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Perhaps you reading this now need a reminder that what’s happening might just be a signpost: the real home is not this, not yet. We all have something in our lives to remind us this isn’t our home.