I was meditating on a familiar passage from Jeremiah:

This is GOD’s Word on the subject: “As soon as Babylon’s seventy years are up and not a day before, I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I’m doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. “When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I’ll listen. “When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. “Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” GOD’s Decree. “I’ll turn things around for you. I’ll bring you back from all the countries into which I drove you”—GOD’s Decree—”bring you home to the place from which I sent you off into exile. You can count on it. (Jeremiah 29.10 – 14, MSG)

It’s about the exile of the Jews to Babylon and the fact that they will be there 70 years. One common application is a personal, tempory exile: I’m going through a rough period right now, but God will be with me, and eventually, I’ll get through it.

This is a good application, but as I read it, I’m thinking, “You know, things are going pretty good for me right now. I don’t feel in exile.” Then I remembered: I’m not really home. I don’t often think about our eternal condition on the new earth, but I should. As C.S. Lewis wrote:

If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.

Right now, I’m on earth where evil sometimes has its way. I’m getting older, and I have way fewer years to be around than I’ve already been around. Maybe it’s time to change my focus to my permanent residence.

I’m in exile, but it is here that God will take care of me. It is here that he’ll listen when I pray. It is here that he’ll be found when I search. And he will bring me home.

This is a bit weird: having a focus on being exiled from my true home yet making my home here with God. I’m not waiting until eternity to be in his presence. I’m in his presence now. He cares for me now. He’s close to me now. 

Our Father, you’re in heaven, where I will join you soon. But in the meantime, may your name be honored here, may your Kingdom come here, and may your will be done here as it is there. 

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3.1 – 4, ESV)

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2.9 – 11, ESV)