Keeping Our Eyes on Hope Amid Disaster
By Jessica Brodie
You know those Christmas gifts that seem to keep on giving? On Christmas afternoon, after a lengthy cold snap in usually-sunny Columbia, South Carolina, my husband walked into our bedroom to discover the ceiling quite literally pouring water all over our carpet and bed. It turns out the pipes in my son’s second-floor bathroom froze and then burst, flooding our room directly below.
We thought we’d done all the right things, leaving our faucets on all over the house to prevent a disaster when the temperatures dipped below freezing. Yet despite our best efforts, disaster came anyway.
It could be a lot worse—thankfully, we have homeowner’s insurance to cover the repair work, and a guest bedroom where we can sleep until the repairs are complete. Had we not been home at the time the pipes burst, the damage could have been far, far more catastrophic.
But for now, our bedroom is a construction zone.
It’s a strange feeling, isn’t it, when your regular routine is thrown off, and not only for a few days or while you’re on vacation but for a lengthy period of time? By all accounts, things still seem relatively normal. We’re blessed to still be living at the same house, still using our kitchen and our master bathroom, still parking in the same driveway and kissing the same family members farewell as they head off to school and work for the day.
Yet it’s also simultaneously foreign, like we’re guests in our own home, sleeping on an entirely different mattress with different bed sheets and different carpet beneath our feet.
In a sense, it reminds me of what the apostle Paul said in Philippians 3 about keeping our focus on the Lord, not on the things of this world, for we are guests here on earth, temporary residents just passing through en route to our true home: the Kingdom of Heaven.
“But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior,” Paul writes in Philippians 3:20 (NLT).
The apostle John echoes this in 1 John 2:15-17, urging, “Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.”
My husband and I aren’t getting too comfortable in our upstairs guest room. In another month, we hope, we’ll be back downstairs in our own bedroom again.
Similarly, those of us who call ourselves Christians, who belong to and believe in Christ and who follow him, shouldn’t get too comfortable in this world for long. Our real citizenship is in heaven.
Instead of building up earthly legacies—money, possessions, the appearance of power and prestige—we know we must focus on the eternal. That means spreading the Gospel and loving others well, sharing what comforts we have with others, and blessing and forgiving others in the same way God has blessed and forgiven us. That means keeping one foot in this world and one in the next, always with an eye on the eternal: the heavenly home awaiting us in our Father’s house.
As Jesus told his disciples in John 14:1-3, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.”
My friends, this I pass on to you in encouragement and love. Whatever hardship you are experiencing right now—whether something relatively small like the upheaval of a bedroom or something massive like the loss of a loved one or displacement from your nation because of war or political unrest—know that what we go through here on earth is temporary. It might hurt, and it’s hard, but it won’t last forever.
What does last forever is our eternal soul when we choose to follow Jesus, and the joy we are promised we will one day experience in the warm and welcoming arms of our beloved Creator.
So take heart, and let the hope that Christ promises flood every square inch of your heart, mind, and soul.
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THANKS TO MY SPONSORS: MATT BRODIE, KATHLEEN PATELLA, AND BILLY ROBINSON.
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