Coming Home

(With all due respect to Diddy)

It's that time of year for us students. That last sprint to the finish where we're pretty much just hanging on at this point and trying not to screw up or get burnt out too badly. Everything just sort of seems to ramp up in intensity and stress.

So it was nice that I got to spend last week back in Irvine over spring break. One of my favorite things about going home is simply that it always feels like home to me. It makes sense, given that I was born and raised there my entire life before college, but everything always feels so familiar. Driving down the same streets, walking around the same places, it just feels right. It's something that's hard to put into words, that sense of belonging and identity that's attached to a location, but it's always so powerful when I get back.

It's funny because whenever I come back to ASU, there's also a certain sense of familiarity. I remember the first time I came out here, it was an adjustment simply because I wasn't used to where things were. I like to group trips based on what's near each other and that process is different out here because, obviously, stores/restaurants aren't clustered in exactly the same way. There were other things too, like how big the street signs are here compared to back home or the speed cameras which are all over or the lack of a double yellow line on the carpool lane.

But now it feels pretty ordinary coming back. Getting off the 10 east to get back to my place here feels the same to me whether I started in Orange County or somewhere in Phoenix. And yet even though it's much more natural now, there's still a distinct difference. Being in Tempe feels normal, but being in Irvine feels home.

I was thinking about this when I reading Hebrews 11:13-16 earlier this week.
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.


As Christians we often talk about how we're citizens of heaven and strangers of this world, but I don't know how often I personally really think about that and what it means. I know I don't have a perfect understanding of that at all. Conceptually I know that being a citizen of heaven means having that longing to be away from this world which pales so much in comparison to our heavenly home but also representing our Father while we're still here.

I think it's so easy to keep that in the back of our heads and act like we hold dual citizenship. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can keep our citizenship in heaven while temporarily having citizenship of this earth as well and access the "privileges" that it entails. But that's not the case at all and shouldn't be how we think. It's impossible to be both.

Rather I think it's more appropriate to take on the perspective that we have a working visa for this world. We're all here for a designated amount of time and all have a job to do and responsibilities during our stay. Then once we're done, we leave. We go back to that "better country" that's talked about in Hebrews. And even though we haven't been there yet, once we get there we will know it and love it and it'll be like we've been there forever. Because that's what it's like to go home.