Journal Entry / November 13, 2022
For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. (ESV)
Hebrews 13:14
Where do I let my heart and mind spend time in contemplation? Where do my longings and desires gravitate toward? Do they seek out the temporary dwelling of this world? Does my heart long for the pleasures of this world? Does my mind stay transfixed with the planning and seeking of material things? Am I living for today without any care for my eternal future? This life is filled with so many distractions that seek to lure me away from serving and loving Christ alone. It is far too easy to let myself become entangled in the temporary and momentary and lose sight of the eternal glories of my Father’s call to draw near and abide with him. Jesus calls me heavenward. Jesus has gone there to prepare a place for me. He will come once again to bring me to my home in this heavenly city.
For what am I seeking in this life? I am looking for purpose and meaning. I am looking for confirmation that my waking up every morning is not just some cosmic happenstance that serves no real purpose. I am searching and seeking for community and family. I am in desperate need to see this heavenly city that is to come.
Yet I continue to become distracted by this present city that I live in. It continually draws my attention away from the eternal, and pressures me to focus and live only in the here and now. This temporary city calls me to live a temporary life that is focused only on myself. It calls me to live a prideful, arrogant, self-righteous, self-centered life. A life that drifts ever so gradually from the things of God. It is like an anesthetic slowly numbing every part of my heart, mind, and soul. Slowly causing me to slumber. To take a little rest from my struggles and just relax in this worldly city.
Jesus tells me differently. He tells me to follow him outside the city to the place of hardship and struggle. He calls me to pick up my cross daily and follow him. He calls me to a life of discipline that requires endurance and faith and hope. He calls me to a life of trusting only him. He calls me to seek my true home in heaven with the Lord God Creator of all things. He calls me to come home to my Father. My true Father. My living Father who loves me to the uttermost. This is where my motivation should be focused all the time. Not on these temporary passing simple pleasures of the present world, but on the eternal satisfying love of God through Christ. This present city is just a pretender and deceiver. My true home… My heavenly home… This is my destiny and my calling. So I will lift my eyes toward my Savior and follow him. I will follow him through the trials and the struggles and the adversity of this life. I will follow him because he loves me. He loves me and will lead me home to where he is now – with the Father.