Just beyond the river...

This morning, while driving to work, I was thinking about the Mississippi. I work just east of the river, at a hospital near Riverside. Driving to work, I catch a glimpse of the river to the west.

The Mississippi River slices southward from Lake Superior down through the Delta and terminates into the Gulf. Today, I’m on the eastern edge of the river, making a home in Tennessee. Before, I called a small town in Arkansas home. I was born elsewhere, but Arkansas is where my family is. It’s where I spent much of my youth. It’s where I graduated from both high school and university. Many of the most significant events in my life and in the life of my family happened there. It became home.

The Mississippi reminds me of home – but one that’s not mine anymore. My home is here. In Memphis. In Tennessee. East of the river – and just beyond that body of water is the home of my parents, my brothers, aunts, uncles, grandmother – everyone. But I’m not so far away: any given weekend, a short trip – only an hour and a half – will take me back to my mother’s house. The river is a comfort. And I’m happy in my new home.

Israel remembered rivers, too.

By the rivers of Babylon— there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land?

Psalm 137: 1-4

For them, home was just the other side of the river, as well – but no weekend trip could take them back. Israel is now only a shadow of the People God meant for them to be: enslaved, in captivity and bound to this new land, compelled to make a home among hostility and wilderness, the river was not a comfort. On the other side were the ruins of home. The temple. God.

They mourned but they did not forget who they were and where was home.

We, too, despite our homes here, are strangers in a hostile land. They serve different gods here, sing different songs. Here we’re only a shadow of the people we’re meant to be. On the other side of a much larger river lies home. Our father. Our God.

Sometimes we forget who we are and where is home.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Philippians 3:20 – 21