This world is not our home.

We’re just passing through.

Strangers, Peter called us. Pilgrims. No wonder we don’t always fit in. We’re citizens of another country. Foreigners.

Our language is different, regardless of the mother tongue. Every earthly language has its carnal and spiritual tongue. For the vast majority of earth’s citizens everything centers in materialism and is punctuated with profanity. Using that same language there is a minority who speak the language of heaven, a divine dialect centered in Jesus and punctuated with praise.

The aim of heaven’s citizens should be different. While others hoard earth’s trinkets and struggle to own as much as possible of this troubled planet, the citizen of heaven remembers that there is a better land in which to invest. He is driven by a statement of his Lord that contrasted the owning of the whole world to the value of one soul.

Heaven’s citizens are good citizens of earth. They obey the laws, treat their neighbors with respect and kindness and work for thegood of the nation in which they live. They take part in worthwhile projects and bring a positive influence in any community. Still, they are not overwhelmed by earth’s problems, knowing that God is working out His purpose and that at the proper time, their Lord will come.

While traveling through this world, heaven’s citizens are not immune to earth’s afflictions. They catch cold, get the measles and sometimes have headaches. They even experience death because they are members of Adam’s race. But they know that life’s end can only take them home. And that is where they really long to be... heaven!