Eternity in My Heart

Before we left Tanzania, I told my friend Alyssa, I’m scared I’ll like it too much in America.  I’m afraid it will be too hard to come back to Tanzania.

I like it here.  I like my apartment.  I like that I never have to worry about water or electricity problems.  I like being comfortable.

I like that I can run out to the store at 8:00 at night and know I will find exactly what I need, and be back home in 20 minutes.

I like that I can walk through the neighborhood and no one stares at me because I stick out.  There’s a pediatrician’s office right down the street.  There’s meat I don’t have to cook for 5 hours to make it chewable.

I love that our families are so close and we get to see them all the time.  I love that we get to spend time with so many life-long friends.  I love that my kids get to be in Awana.

But I have been haunted.

It’s all temporary.

It won’t last.

It won’t last.

It’s only a year.  It will go by fast.  And leaving will be that much harder because it’s so fresh in my heart.

It steals my joy.  It’s hard for me to enjoy it all, knowing that it’s not permanent and it will all end sooner than I want it to.

I ache for permanent.

For never-ending.

For eternal.

For eternity.  That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?

Because the truth is, that even if I got my perfect little life in America, with the Victorian house with the porch swing and white picket fence, even if I owned it and we were all healthy and financially stable with a great retirement plan,

It still would be temporary.

Because there are always fires and earthquakes and typhoons and cancer and robbers and failing stock markets and death.

Death.

And I know this, so why do I have such a hard time accepting it?  Why is there such a deep ache in my heart for permanent when everything around me is temporary?

Because I was not created for temporary.

As Solomon wrote, Eternity is in my heart.

Yet looking for eternity on earth is futile.  Chasing after the wind.

And so I seek to embrace this temporary life.  My temporary life in America; my temporary life on earth.  To find the joy in each of these days God gives me, in whatever country, whatever house, whatever situation I am in.  To live fully and completely here and now, knowing that the Permanent is yet to come.

We are not home yet.

hiking with Anchor Church friends in Long Beach

watching Uncle Brandon’s soccer game

Awana Sparks

speaking at Concord Bible Church