So we are always confident, because we know that while we are living in the body, we are away from our home with the Lord. We live by faith and not by sight. ~ 2 Corinthians 5:6–7 (CEB)
Dear God -- We spend so much of our lives living in exile. We want to be on a different island. We want to be somewhere closer to friends and family. We want to pursue a different kind of life. It seems that we're never totally at home wherever we are. Yet, we trust you. We know that we will be completely at home when we are living in your presence. We try to do that everyday now. But in a sense, what we do now is only practice for what is to come. It's going to be great -- a joy beyond description. Please give me even more faith so that I can lean into the future. Amen.
Challenging Words
- exile -- when you are forced to live somewhere away from the place that you consider home. The prophet Jeremiah was writing to the Jews who had been taken as prisoners to live in Babylon. He is trying to encourage them. He wants them to remember the Lord and that their home is still in Jerusalem. They were in exile for 70 years.
- lean into the future -- an idiom -- If you are leaning into the future you are determined that you are not going to let the past or the present define your life. Instead, you a making your life be all about what you know is coming in the future.
