Longing For a Better Country?

By Cal Cook

I don’t know why but ever since I read the scriptures Monday morning as a part of my devotional time this phrase has been nagging at me.

Hebrews 11:14-16a People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.

It comes right after the ‘Heroes of Faith’ passage where the writer speaks of the faith of Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham. Each of them believed and lived their lives honoring The One who breathed the breath of life into them. They lived believing in the promise of something more…they died still believing and yet not having received, the inspired word of God says:

Hebrews 11:13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.

Somehow they saw them and welcomed them from afar…living in hope of what will be? Maybe that’s what’s nagging at me…the Word of God says, people of great faith live in this life like a foreigner longing for home…a better country that they’ve never been to, but have seen from afar. Maybe the passage is nagging at me because I’m not there…not fully. I guess it’s that balance of being in the world but not of it.

Balance has never been my strong suite…it seems as if I’m always going in one extreme or another. Either rejecting this life and all that is in it or reveling in it to the point of playing the fool. I’m either playing the part of the Pharisee or the Rich Fool of the parable from Luke 12 last week! When do I get to be like Jesus? When do I get to live at the fulcrum instead of just glimpsing at it as I swing past?

I guess it’s like verse 13 says…even the heroes of faith only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. Maybe the nagging is part of the plan; maybe angst is what we are supposed to feel? Maybe that’s what it means to long for a better country? Am I there yet? Probably not…but the struggle means I’m on my way…?