not home yet!

This is definitely going to be a hard topic for me yet glad to tackle it because it has been on my mind for some time, as I sat in meditation yesterday in a dark room left only me and my mind to entertain myself for the rest of the time till I could sleep, this was a slopping ground for the meandering of my thoughts.

There is no hard topic than that which fetches the past, but well, growing up as a little boy (before I joined new hope Uganda) life lost its meaning for many reasons, but what I want to talk about today is the lack of a home, this can take different measures of meaning, whether a physical home or people that I myself call family, my childhood years are filled with memories of movement from one village to another and from one neighborhood to the other only cared for by those who understood the situation. Day time was the best time for me because I was nowhere around the “house” and because child care was and is poor among people in the village none bothered looking for me, but trouble came at sun setting, this was a time to face the reality of being homeless, a time to regret my behavior earlier in the day for my sleeping in that small mad grass thatched house was entirely determined by my earlier acts. I remember days when I didn't measure up, when I did not do good enough to deserve spending the night there.

Having been raised in that kind of environment there has been a struggle within me to live different from how I was raised, to simply work hard to provide myself a place I call home, this has been a genuine fight yet has been discouraged by the way things have been not working as planned, it has indeed made me think of how this is going to be difficult especially putting in account of the economy of Uganda at large.

The lord at the same time has caught hold of my heart changing things round to pointing to a better home than walls and a roof, my view of a home was distorted by childhood experiences to creating in me a lifelong desire to build and create something which would last forever instead of concentrating on myself who was meant to last forever.

 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven:

 What i don’t actually understand while on this earth is that life is a temporary assignment, i not yet home, life here on earth is described as  a mist, a wisp of smoke,

 (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow:)

While on this earth i get so much attached to it that i fail to let go, it offer many good temporary items that I may mistake it to be my final destination and home, this is one thing that I appreciate from the story of my childhood, that although it was hard to live in those days the lord was teaching me not to settle for less, not to settle for what the world was offering me but through the struggles look for a home after knowing that am only but a stranger.

 I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.

If I don’t posse a home here on this earth then there must be a better home, but the struggle is thinking that this is all that life has and settling as citizen forgetting that my home is in heaven with Christ. These homes are just a tip of a fore shadow of what we are to meet in heaven.

 Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

We are Christ’s ambassadors here on this earth but we have for some reason become traitors by falling in love with a place that is not ours.

We find no satisfaction on this earth because this is not where our ultimate satisfaction lies, we were not meant to be here forever, the sad fact is that some have become like fish that happily lives outside water an incident that never should occur.

Let us stretch our faith (Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.) to the unseen and see heaven as our home. Let us understand that this life is a small proportion of our life after death when we will finally live the rest of lives in his glory. The 100 years of this life is just like the tip of an iceberg but the rest of life in eternity is the big unseen part under the surface.

I most times find myself in the footsteps of a retiring missionary coming back home on the same ship with the president of united states, a cheering crowds, a military band and a red carpet and the media welcomed the president home but the missionary slipped off unnoticed. Feeling self-pity and resentment, he began complaining to God just like any human, then the lord gently reminded him, but my son, “you are not home yet”

So when life gets tough, when am overwhelmed with doubt, or when I wonder if living for Christ is worth the effort, I am reminded that am not home yet. Knowing that I won’t leave home by death- but will go home where I was meant to be.

BY: kiggundu wilson via the purpose driven life