It's A Nice Place To visit, But...

I was blessed to have had the opportunity to go to Israel in 2000. As often happens when I travel, I thought it would be nice to live there. Of course, six months after my visit a lot of shooting and bombing erupted in Jerusalem and all over Israel and the Palestinian territories, and my assessment might have been different had I visited the Holy Land in the fall of 2000 rather than the spring. If I had been in Israel that fall I probably wouldn't even have been able to say, "It's a nice place to visit.""

Actually, people make that assessment, "It's a nice place to visit," after visiting some of the most beautiful and exotic vacation destinations. But even then they often go on to conclude, "but I wouldn't want to live there." There is just something powerful about "home" that draws us back. Even Dorothy Gale, dazzled by the beauty and wonders of Oz, had to conclude, "There's no place like home," and back she went to black and white Kansas from technicolor Oz. There is no place like home. But is Kansas home? Or North Carolina? Or New Jersey? Well, I've lived in New Jersey and North Carolina, and a bunch of other places too. And I've come to the conclusion that, contrary to the old adage, there was a place I "visited" that I'd rather live.

You see, that trip to Israel was, not to oversell it, transformational. Though I didn't speak the languages, except with those who accommodated me and spoke in English, though my faith put me in a decided minority in the land, though the landscape showed then the many scars of the millennia-old war that has raged there, to say nothing of what has happened in the eight years since I visited, I nevertheless felt strangely at home there.

You know, the truth is, wherever you are, no matter how long you've been there, you are not home. The Bible makes it quite clear, we are all travelers through this place. (1 Peter 2.11; see Hebrews 11 for fuller understanding) Our true home is with God. And, to borrow a line from an old, old song, if you are asking, "Show me the way to go home," I can help you. The wisdom and philosophies of the post-modern world notwithstanding, there is just One Way home--Jesus. He plainly said as much when he told Thomas and the other apostles, "I am the way...no one comes to the Father, but through me." (John 14.6)

Back to Israel, or rather, back to my visit there. I spent several days of my trip in Jerusalem. It was an awesome place to visit, and I did and do, want to live there because God has declared that it is His place of eternal dwelling. No, not the city divided into Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters, surrounded by beautiful, but bullet-pocked, walls. That city is sort of a shadow, a very imperfect likeness of another Jerusalem, a new Jerusalem, whose foundation was laid by God, a Jerusalem that will come "down from heaven form God." (Hebrews 11.10 ; Revelation 21.2) Long ago God himself declared that Jerusalem would be His permanent address, His home, "For the LORD has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling: 'This is my resting place for ever and ever; here I will sit enthroned, for I have desired it--'" (Psalm 132.13-14) If the "new Jerusalem" is going to be where God is going to hang His hat forever, then that's where I want to be. What made Israel and Jerusalem such a great place to visit was not its past, which most people go to see, but its future, which we can only imagine. And I am thrilled knowing that one day it will be my dwelling place. In fact, Jesus, who is the One Way, to get there, has even gone to the trouble to prepare a place just for me. (John 14.2-3). A nice place to visit? You bet, and I long to be there again. You just let me know if you'd like to go there too. I promise, if you visit, you'll want to live there!