Still Looking for That Better Country

I’ve been a foreigner for so long that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to live as a citizen.

It’s now normal for me to stick out in a crowd, to get gawks, stares. Every two years, I apply for expensive visas for permission to live in Tanzania. Even though I’ve lived here sixteen years, I’ve never voted in a Tanzanian election, or even felt like I have a right to a political opinion. I’ve never owned a house. I know that just about everything I own will one day be owned by someone else, so I better not get attached to it. I have the uncomfortable feeling that some of those around me are in awe of my foreignness and unnecessarily defer to me, but others resent my very presence in their country.

Either way, I am an outsider.

It’s become so normal that sometimes I forget how exhausting it is to live as a foreigner. It’s like playing a card game, every day, where you keep discovering new rules that everyone understands except you. Just when you think you’ve finally got it all figured out–surprise! You don’t. And you find yourself feeling like a two-year-old or a hard-hearted wretch or just a plain idiot.

As I think about the new life ahead of me–living as a citizen in a country that technically is my own,  sometimes I’m terrified; sometimes I’m grief-stricken, but other times I’m excited. Yes, my relationship with America is complicated, but the lure of the American dream is strong. We can settle down and put down roots. Maybe for the first time in my life, I can own a house! I can plant trees and watch them grow with my children. I won’t have to worry about visas anymore. I won’t stand out in a crowd. 

As much as I love living overseas, there’s a part of me that aches for permanency, normalcy, security. They are feelings I have stuffed down and suppressed for most of my adult life. Now that there’s a possibility of fulfilling them, they have risen to the surface.

I never realized how much I longed for a homeland until it was finally at my fingertips.

The appeal is strong. Which is exactly why I must push back against that feeling and remind myself that America was never meant to be my homeland. I can’t put my hope in a country–even the richest, most powerful country in the world.

I could buy a house, and it could burn down. I could put down roots, and then lose a job. I could save for kids’ college, and the economy could collapse. I could fit in–but as a Christ-follower, am I supposed to?

If I give into the temptation of allowing America to feel too much like home, to become comfortable, secure, rooted, then what happens when obeying God challenges that comfort? What happens when I need to stand for something that might sacrifice the personal kingdom I built for myself?

And haven’t I always said, all these years, that one of the best parts of living overseas is how it reminds me that my real home is in heaven? So why would I want to give in to a desire that tells me my home is in America?

In the most famous biblical chapter on faith, there’s a key line: The Faithful didn’t get the homeland they longed for. They did not receive what was promised.

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. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 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.

Kind of flies in the face of the American dream, doesn’t it? The people in Hebrews 11 are our pillars of faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. They were strangers, exiles, nomads. They recognized that their homeland was not on this earth.

Those who never found a home on this earth are celebrated as our faith-heroes. 

There’s no reason why God would want me to feel at home in this world. I keep craving it; I pursue it; seek after it….but it’s a misplaced longing. In fact, if I do feel too much at home, then something is wrong. Because that desire was never meant to be fulfilled on this side of eternity.

Which is why, even in America, I will need to remind myself tokeep living like a missionary.

Of course, it won’t be wrong for me to buy a house and plant trees, or vote, or teach my children the Pledge of Allegiance. I just must be careful to remember where my true allegiance lies. Because my home will never be found on this earth.