Home: Coming or Leaving?

I am back in my hometown today, since the semester of college has ended.  I spent more than half of my growing-up years here, and this house is where my family has lived for the longest.  Right now I'm kind of in limbo: most of my belongings are in my dorm room, but a lot of my things are here.  My family is here, my childhood is here, but my future is with my fiancée in Nebraska.  The phrase "home is where the heart is" seems to apply very strongly to me.  My heart has been with my family, but now my heart belongs to my fiancée.  Now, home is wherever he is.  That is how it will be for the rest of my life.

Leaving my college-home and coming to my childhood home is making me think about where my home is spiritually.  If "home is where the heart is," where is my heart?  Where is my home?  When I leave this earth and go to heaven, will I be leaving home- or coming home?

Jesus said that he is not of this world, and therefore those who follow him are not of this world, either.  This earth, this life, is a temporary existence.  It is a meaningful existence, but it will not last for long.  We are, in a way, in limbo: part of us, our physical body, is in this world, but our spiritual ones long for the eternal world.  Right now I'm preparing to make a home with my future husband.  Are we, as Christ's bride, the church, mindful of our future home with Christ?  Am I in preparation for that life, for that new home?

All my thoughts these days, at least most of them, center around my future husband and my future home with him.  I have an intense longing for that new life to begin.  I'm ready for it to start.  But for now, I'm forced to be patient in the waiting period, and make the best use of this in-between time.  I feel like it's that way with my spiritual home, too.  I have a very deep desire to be with Christ eternally, and if he were to take me now I would be glad to go.  But I have much work to do in the time between now and then.  I have a purpose.  I have a life that he has given me in which to serve him, however temporal it may be.

My home is where my heart is: physically, with my fiancée.  Spiritually, with Jesus.  Today, during this vacation, I'm going to enjoy and relish being home in both ways.