We Are Not Meant For This World
Since the day Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, the followers of God have dwelt in exile. Some eras this has been more fully realized than others, but we have always been pulled away from this world by the promise of a better country. The issues of each country we have found ourselves in throughout the history of mankind have been as far reaching as the lands themselves where God’s people have stepped. From Africa to Australia and South America to Asia, the people of God have dwelt as slaves, masters, friends, enemies, powerful, powerless. You name it, we’ve been there. The world has loved us and hated us. We’ve loved and fought countless wars against each other. But the one constant is, we always forget where our true home is.
“We are not meant for this world.”
While the people of Israel wandered through the wilderness for 40 years and while they were exiled for 70 more, they sought a better home. Hebrews 11 says this of those brothers and sisters whom loved God,
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
They longed to be in a city and a land that was their own, where God had promised to be with them. But their disobedience and turning from God to other idols had led them out of God’s presence and into the arms of the idols they wished to serve instead. Yet, even through all this turning, God still blessed a remnant of them, and these he would never forsake.
“They were not meant for this world.”
During World War II there were men all across Germany who bent to Hitler’s will, and only a few who stood against him. These men were exiles in their own country, a country who had turned on them for not joining the Nazi scheme to exterminate the Jewish race. Men like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his fellow patriots stood for the truth in a time of appeasement, and as such they became outcasts in a nation which they were formerly proud members of. What gave them courage to stand against those who would eventually have them killed was the trust that they were first and foremost citizens of God’s kingdom, not Germany. Their kingdom was not Earthly, but Heavenly.
“They were not meant for this world.”
Finally, consider what C.S. Lewis said so simply, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
He explains clearly what we still feel today. The world around us seems to push us further and further to the margins, out of the Earthly kingdoms in which we find ourselves. As many of us fight and claw to keep the idea of a “Christian Nation” alive, in reality we are not members of any earthly nation at all. If we seek a nation or political party here on this Earth that is home, we will never be satisfied. This must mean that we are indeed made for another world. A heavenly one, with the Creator God of the Universe ruling and reigning for eternity, in perfect order, love, and peace. Friends…
“We are not meant for this world.”