I’m sitting on the back porch of a cabin at a retreat center twenty minutes outside of Blacksburg. The rain this morning has left a chill in the air, the ground wet, and a light mist hovering just above the treetops. The trees around me range from green to red to leafless, and the only sounds to be heard are the leaves rustling, the water still dripping from tree branches, and the birds. I sip coffee from a styrofoam cup and just sit, and soak it in. Everything is still, and peaceful. Right now, I could almost forget about all the projects and homework waiting for me back at Tech, the test I have coming up on Tuesday, the construction career fair on Thursday, life decisions to be made, even the anxiety of the uncertainty about my knee. Right now, it is enough to just sit in the arms of God, and let him take all the cares away.

I’m at [nlcf] Fall Retreat. It started yesterday evening, and will end this afternoon. It’s just 24 hours, to pull away from everything and refocus, reboot. Many, if not most, of us had a pretty grueling week, meaning this retreat was not a moment too soon. When the speaker got up in the opening session last night, he encouraged us at the very beginning to be looking for a single takeaway point that God is saying to us that, if nothing else sticks, we can take with us when we leave. By the time the speaker said all this, I’d already figured out what God was saying to me.

“Let go. I’ve got this.”

I feel like I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety right now. A lot of it is subtle, below the surface, and God has had to unpack a lot of it and show me. The obvious one is my knee. As I posted almost two weeks ago, I injured my knee three and a half weeks ago when I wiped out on my bike. After my first visit to the doctor it sounded like it wasn’t too serious, and it would heal within a few weeks. I just needed to take it easy, and keep it straight as much as possible—easier said than done, but I’ve managed. It seemed to be doing better, but a lot of that was ibuprofen. And it was beginning to concern me that it was still acting up. I went back on Thursday for him to look at it again, and he was surprised to see it still slightly swollen when compared to my other knee. He had me set up an appointment with their specialist, which won’t happen for another month, because he only comes in on Wednesdays and November 28 was the first day that he had an opening that I could fit into my schedule. He said that the outcome of that appointment could pretty much go one of two ways—physical therapy or surgery. There is no in-between. I walked out of the clinic with my hopes—that this was just a minor thing that would heal without any major problems—having taken a pretty good toll. My knee injury is not only a major inconvenience for the foreseeable future, but something that I am finding myself more and more nervous about in the long term.

I’m also wrestling with decisions about what I want to do with my life after graduation, just over a year and a half away now, and approaching faster than ever. While on the one hand, I still have a year and a half to figure this out, on the other, this could also have repercussions on what I do with my upcoming summer. With a career fair this week with a lot of contractors looking for interns, summer is not nearly as far away as it seems.

These are just two of the things that have been weighing on me, even more than I realized. Coupled with the week I described above, with presentations, projects, and more, when I finally got here last night, I was ready for this retreat.

In the first set of songs, we sang “Everlasting God.” I immediately thought of the passage of Scripture it comes from, one of my favorites.

Look up into the heavens.
Who created all the stars?
He brings them out like an army, one after another,
calling each by its name.
Because of his great power and incomparable strength,
not a single one is missing.
O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles?
O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights?
Have you never heard?
Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
He gives power to the weak
and strength to the powerless.
Even youths will become weak and tired,
and young men will fall in exhaustion.
But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint.

Isaiah 40:26-31

It was a moment of relief sweeping over me, as God put things back in perspective, and reminded me that he’s got my back. Verse 31 especially hit home, given the fact that I can’t run right now.

After the songs, our pastor, Jim, got up to introduce the speaker. But first he read the famous “consider the sparrows” passage from Matthew 6, where Jesus told the crowds not to worry, because God already knew what they needed, and he was looking out for them.

It was a much-needed one-two punch. It was at this point that the speaker got up and said what I echoed above, about finding one takeaway point this weekend. And I was thinking, “Yeah, I think I’ve found it.”

It follows in the new theme that I’ve started to see God threading into my life—my utter dependence on God. That is, my growing awareness of my utter helplessness on my own and need to be completely depending on him.

They gave us several questions as ideas to be thinking about when they sent us out for our hour-fifteen-minutes of solitude with God. But I just found myself sitting on this deck, soaking in the scene around me, reflecting on all this, and starting to let go, if only for this short period of time I have to sit here.

Now, as I polish this up and hit “Publish,” I am back in civilization. Those 24 hours went by really fast, as these retreats are prone to do. Tomorrow will be a typical Sunday. I’ll sleep in, get up late, and eventually go to 130 Jackson to run sound for the evening service. Then Monday morning will hit again. But hopefully, I’ll remember to keep coming back to this thought in the midst of all that, especially when things start to get overwhelming again. I don’t think God is done talking to me about it yet.

I work two shifts a week at West End, one of the dining centers on campus. The job can be frustrating, mundane, insane. It can be slow and boring one minute and hectic the next. I work register a lot, and the past few weeks, with my knee injury, that’s what I’ve been doing almost every shift. In that position, it’s an understatement to say that you interact with all kinds of people. Sometimes those interactions make me wonder about the existence of intelligent life. At all. Sometimes I begin to lose faith in humanity. But every so often, something comes along that does just the opposite. I had one of those moments today.

This weekend is family weekend at Tech, meaning there are (drumroll, please…) a lot of families visiting. Read: a lot of people without meal plans. We get a lot of parents and siblings who try to pay with cash, and we keep having to explain that we don’t take cash, but we accept credit and debit cards. One of these people was a girl, probably upper high school or college-aged, who ordered pizza, and like many others, started to give me cash. I explained that we don’t take cash, but we take plastic. She started to say that she’d have to go find her brother and borrow his Hokie Passport (the Virginia Tech ID used for just about everything, including paying for meals.) At this point, the random guy in line behind her stepped forward, held out his Hokie Passport, and said, “I got it.” The girl was just blown away. She couldn’t express her thanks enough.

One of the really cool things about Tech is the idea of the “Hokie Nation.” From the bond we have with each other, to our bleed-maroon-and-orange loyalty whether our football team is ranked or can’t move the ball forward to save their lives, to our hospitality and willingness to go out of our way for visitors to our campus and our town, this is what it means to be a Hokie. I’ve heard and read numerous testimonials about people who were astonished by the welcoming atmosphere and helpfulness of people here. I even read an article about how Georgia Tech fans who were here for the game back at the beginning of the year couldn’t believe how nice and welcoming Hokies were, even to fans of the opposing team. What I witnessed today was one more example of the Hokie Nation in action.

But in the end, it wasn’t the nebulous “Hokie Nation” who stepped forward to pay for the meal of a complete stranger. It was an individual, who is part of the Tech culture, but who ultimately made the decision personally to step up and help out. Just because. He had no idea that the cashier who took that order would go on to immortalize in writing what he did. He saw a need, and while he easily could’ve let the girl go track down her brother, and meanwhile ordered his own food—and wouldn’t have been wrong to do so—he didn’t. He offered to buy her food for her. It was such a small thing, a split-second decision, but so powerful. If there was any doubt about that, the look on that girl’s face said it all.

What if each of us stepped up like that more often? What if, when we saw a need like that, our gut reaction was to jump in and fill it? What kind of impact could we have?

I am, and hopefully each of you are, part of a bigger, more important nation than that of the Hokies. One that demands more unity, more loyalty, and more expression of love to those around us. This nation is known as the kingdom of God. What if God’s kingdom was defined by, and recognized by, these same principles that mark the Hokie Nation—but more so? What if the kingdom were made up of individuals who weren’t too busy or absorbed or downright selfish to hand their credit card to the cashier for the person in front of them?

Shortly before Jesus went to the cross, he told his disciples, “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples” (John 13:35, NLT). Of course, it is also pretty clear in Scripture that our love should not only be for each other, but for everyone. Jesus said that love would be what defines us, what the world recognizes us by. Notice that he said this will be the case, not just the ideal scenario that he would like to be true someday. Unfortunately, the church in the media isn’t doing the greatest job of fulfilling that. But we can change that. There was a time, centuries ago, when the Christians were known as the most compassionate people in the known world. They were the ones who, when a plague struck the Roman empire, were willing to open their homes to the sick and give them the care they needed, instead of shunning them as the rest of the world did. And the world noticed. We know this from a secular historian of the time who recorded the story of the plague. I really wish I knew this story in more detail. I read it years ago, I think in one of Philip Yancey’s books.

But as I was saying, we can change what the church has come to be seen as. I believe this because, as I have discussed in previous posts, we are utterly helpless alone, but we have been and are being transformed by God into the kind of people he wants us to be. Jesus said that we would be recognized by our love. We can take his word for it. Because the Holy Spirit is in us, and has the power to make it happen.

So in this next week, as you go about your day, look for ways to impact the world around you. It doesn’t have to be anything huge. Just small things, like buying a stranger’s meal, can go a long way. And as Jesus also said, “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones” (Luke 16:10). Let’s change the world, starting this week. To take a line from Apple’s famous “Think Different” commercial,

“Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

I write this with my legs stretched out in front of me, computer in my lap, and a cold pack on my knee, having just popped some ibuprofen. A week and a half ago, I was on my bike, my primary way of getting around campus (well…until a week and a half ago.) I was riding on the sidewalk, and getting ready to merge onto the road. A pickup was coming towards me, but still a little ways off. I was trying to decide whether to pull out into the road ahead of him, or let him pass first. Next thing I knew my front wheel went off the curb, my bike went over, and its weight combined with mine came down on my knee, which landed squarely on the curb. It was a minor scrape, through my jeans, nothing that would take too long to heal.

It wasn’t until the next day that I started to notice that my knee felt kind of stiff, and somewhat weak and unstable when climbing stairs. That night I noticed it was pretty swollen—not at the bottom of the knee where the impact was, but at the top of the kneecap. The next day I decided it would probably be a good idea to get it checked out. At best, I would be told that it was nothing serious, and what to do to speed its recovery. At worst, I was afraid that the ligament was damaged—or worse—and if so, it definitely needed immediate attention. I set up an appointment for that afternoon at the health center on campus, a “free” service that’s paid for by our bill each semester. The doctor pushed and pulled my knee in different directions, and came to the conclusion that my ligaments were fine. He said it was just the impact of my kneecap on my femur—but this could take several weeks to heal. In the meantime, I just needed to avoid bending it as much as possible. Honestly my fears (about a torn ligament) weren’t completely put to rest. Part of me wasn’t convinced without seeing an MRI. But I decided to just go with it for now, and see how things felt in a few weeks.

So I’ve been doing a lot of limping around campus in the past week and a half, taking a lot longer to get to my classes than even walking under normal circumstances, let along biking. And I’ve been coming to really appreciate the taken-for-granted ability to bend both knees, the hard way—by not having it.

As if to rub in this lack of ability, I got a package last week. It was the new armband I had ordered before my accident, for my new phone. Consistently running is a habit I’ve been trying to revive since leaving high school. Being on the track team, having a big event that I wanted to do well in (yes, our track season consisted of weeks upon weeks of training leading up to a single track meet) was the motivation I needed to get up in the mornings when everyone else was still in bed, and go for a run. Well, everyone except a friend of mine, who was more obsessed (and disciplined) with running than I was. I loved track and field, and obviously wanted to do well in it. And I didn’t always enjoy those morning runs, but I had that motivation to keep at them. But since I’ve been at college, I’ve made multiple attempts to get the habit going again, but before long, it would just get crowded out by everything else I’m juggling. And here I had just started getting back into it again, and it felt great. I even found a couple good times to do it each week, so it looked like this routine might even be sustainable for the foreseeable future. But I didn’t foresee that split-second moment that landed me here, taking ibuprofen and keeping ice packs on my knee, while that armband sits on my desk and collects dust, waiting for whenever my knee decides to feel up to the task of trying to run on it again. From what the doctor said, running is the very thing that puts the most stress on the injured part of my knee, so even when it’s otherwise healed, it might be longer yet before it’s strong enough to start running again.

I’ve written a lot already, and so far, it probably just looks like I’m venting, complaining, or looking for pity. Or all three. But believe me when I say that is not my intent at all. Because hopefully, if you read this blog much, you’ve figured out that when I start typing up something new to put up here for the world to see, it’s because something has got me thinking. And this time, this scenario has brought me face to face with my brokenness and inability. By which I mean both the literal damage to my knee and the resulting difficulty or flat-out inability to do the simplest of things, and my depravity and inability to make anything of my life on my own. That second half might sound a little extreme in response to a knee injury. Allow me to explain.

Like I said, being in a (just forming) habit of running again felt great. I always feel good about myself when I’m running regularly. And to a degree, that’s legitimate and good. A friend of mine started eating better and exercising at the beginning of the summer, and has lost a lot of weight already. And that’s awesome. His other friends and I rejoice with him in that, and it’s definitely something to feel good about. And in my case too, exercising is worthwhile, and something to feel good about. But like everything else, it’s about moderation. The problem is when it starts going to my head, and when my identity gets too wrapped up in it. I’ve realized that one of the things that I defined myself by in high school was running. I was one of the few who went above and beyond the team training, and invested a significant portion of my own time running. I was one of the fewer yet who was running throughout the year, and not just during the weeks leading up to the meet. While there was definitely a lot of good motivation behind that, there was also pride.

And then, when I came here, and failed to maintain that habit, that part of my identity suffered. It became something that I felt the need to do, to feed that defining part of me. And because most of the time I couldn’t keep up the habit, I felt bad about myself for it. And then, several weeks ago, I started running again. And I felt great about myself again. And then, just like that, I can’t. Of course, all the everyday things that I have to do while keeping that leg straight add to my frustration and feelings of inability, but the running is the cherry on top.

As he often does, God used this to start bringing all kinds of stuff to the surface. The other major area where I have been feeling frustrated and unable to perform is in my discipline in spending time in Scripture and in prayer. I wrote about my struggle with this last semester. In that post, I outlined a system I had developed to keep me on top of it. And for the most part, it worked. Until the crunch at the end of the year, when I started to let it slide, and then when summer hit and I let it go almost completely. And this semester I have yet to get back on top of it. But do you see the language here? Perform. Discipline. On top of it. Let it slide. It’s all very performance-based. Like running. This too, while I know part of me realizes my legitimate need for this, for God, and seeks him out because of that need, another part of me treats it the way that part of me treats running—something to measure myself up against. Something to make myself feel good when I’m on top of it, and that I feel bad about when I’m not. The post I wrote right before that one discussed that legitimate need. I talked about how we can’t do life on our own. We need to stay connected to Jesus. I referenced John 15, and pointed out the trap we often fall into of thinking that once we’re saved by grace, we need to start living up to God’s standard on our own power, and how Jesus specifically told us that that is hopeless. We can only produce fruit when we’re attached to the vine, abiding in Christ.

In a very ironic twist, I’ve realized that abiding has become that thing that I’m trying to pull off on my own.

So now I have this dilemma. On the one hand, I cannot bear fruit or get anywhere meaningful in life without being connected to the vine. On the other hand, the very act of staying connected to the vine is just as impossible on my own strength. So I’m stuck.

Or not.

A wise man once said, “When our depravity meets his divinity, it is a beautiful collision.”

(For those of you who are wondering, that man is none other than David Crowder.)

As it turns out, I’m exactly where I need to be. In a place of brokenness—and fully aware of it. To get back on track, I first need to throw my hands in the air, and say that I can’t get anywhere without Christ. I can’t even seek Christ out without Christ. I am totally, utterly, helpless. Just like my knee. And when I realize that—when I really, truly, come to grips with that—it means that the amount of time I spend with him is no longer a measuring stick. It can no longer feed my ego. Just like when I realize that he has given me the ability, desire, and will to run, and that can no longer feed my ego either.

Of course, this doesn’t mean I should just expect God to magically open up large chunks of my schedule and make time spent with him seem infinitely more appealing than every other alternative. Just like it doesn’t mean I expect him to magically open up even more time in my schedule and make running seem like the next best way to spend that time. My part is to trust him to help me manage my time, to help me as I make time for both of these, and to trust him for the will to choose them—first time with him, and then running—over everything else vying for my time and attention. To recognize that every time I crack open my Bible (by which I really mean tap an icon on a screen) or bow my head in prayer, every time I change into my running gear (once my knee heals, that is,) strap on my phone with that yet-to-be-used armband, hit the play button, and go, I remember that it’s only by his strength that I’m doing this. That without him, I’m doomed before I even begin.

Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 1:27-31 (NLT)

There is a bridge on the Virginia Tech campus. Actually there are a lot of bridges on campus. But one of them is a little concrete footbridge, tucked in between several dorms, spanning a driveway that leads to a couple parking lots. Nothing very significant, really. But it found significance for me my freshman year. It has haunted me ever since. (No, before you start freaking out, I never tried jumping off it or anything. Nothing drastic. Just hear me out.)

Last night, I was coming home from a friend’s house, where a bunch of us had watched a movie. I parked my car in “the cage,” the student parking lot on the far western end of campus, and started walking back to my dorm, on the eastern end of campus. I was crossing through another small parking lot near this bridge, and deep down I felt it calling to me. Like it has several times over the past year, when I’m walking across campus, alone, after dark, and I find myself nearby. Something draws me back, calling me to stand on that bridge again. To remember.

Freshman year I spent a lot of time walking around campus. Not just walking between classes and such; I spent many evenings, after dark, wandering around. There was a guy I discipled in 12th grade, who got to be a very good friend, whose family happened to come back to Virginia for a year the same time I graduated and came to Tech. We met up a few times that year, for a weekend or so, but because we had gotten so used to meeting every week for hours at a time, (not to mention all the time we spent together outside of those times) we decided to call each other every week to talk. Reception in my room was terrible, so every Saturday night, I would go outside, bundled up if it was winter, and call him. And while we talked, I would wander. Our calls consistently lasted a couple hours at a time. We would talk about how things were going, or just talk about whatever. Those phone calls may well have been the only thing that got me through that year.

Other times, when I was just feeling overwhelmed, homesick, depressed, I would drop what I was doing and go outside, bundled up if necessary, and wander around, just to get some fresh air, clear my mind, think, pray, vent, whatever.

I don’t remember when I first stumbled upon this bridge, and I don’t really know what about it drew me, but I soon found myself frequenting it, both during those phone calls and during my lone wanderings. Sometimes I would cross it and wander on elsewhere, maybe ending up at the duck pond or who knows where. Other times I would stop and just stand on it while I talked on the phone, or was lost in my own thoughts. I vividly remember standing on that bridge one night, all bundled up, watching the first snow of the winter float to the ground, caught in the light of the lamps lining the bridge, and the lights of the surrounding buildings. I remember another time, watching a raccoon dig through a garbage can next to the driveway below me.

And so this bridge has come to represent all those nights. That year, with all its emotions, is encapsulated in it. And now that I’ve found my place here, found a family here, there it stands, in stark contrast to where I am now, reminding me of where I was not all that long ago, and how far I’ve come. How far God has brought me. So you could say that just as it is a symbol of the valley I walked through, it has become a monument to God’s faithfulness through that valley. And a reminder that whatever valleys come my way in the future, his faithfulness will prevail through all of them.

The sermon today was about Joseph. The Old Testament, coat-of-many-colors Joseph. It is the second part of a series my church, [nlcf], is doing on Covenant and Kingdom. Jim talked about how God’s covenant that he established with Abram (last week’s sermon) applied to Joseph as Abraham’s descendant. As part of that covenant, God promised to walk with Abraham and his descendants through whatever came their way. And so when Joseph was sold into slavery, and then was wrongly accused and imprisoned—through thirteen years of slavery and imprisonment—God never left Joseph’s side. And while he did not orchestrate those circumstances, he used them to transform Joseph, from an arrogant, spoiled teenager to a man of God, who finally realized that he was not at the center of his own universe—God was.

What’s interesting is that I actually started this post last night, when I got back to my room after standing on that bridge for a while. I drafted the first few paragraphs before calling it a night. And now I’ve picked it up again, having just listened to that sermon.

Back in the spring, if you remember, God was talking to me a lot about surrender, abiding in Christ, and such. Now, this seems to be his focus.

It might be because, for all my good intentions in the spring, my discipline in abiding in him has been…lacking. It might be because things have been surfacing in my life that I realize still need a lot of work. It might be because of how great it felt to come back to Tech a week ago, after a summer away…and be excited about it. How awesome it was to walk into Squires for church last Sunday and see all the faces of my brothers and sisters here that I missed, to hear them saying how glad they were to have me back. And to respond, and really mean it, that it was good to be back. Most likely, it’s all those reasons combined. But whatever the reason, it seems that now he has me thinking a lot about this—the truth that he has stuck with me through thick and thin, and he will continue to. And whether it seems like it or not, he is continuing his transformative work in me. Just as Paul said: “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” (Philippians 1:6)

By the blood of Christ, we are participants in the covenant God offered to Abram all those years ago. He offers it to us. His terms of the convenant are this: no matter what we’ve done or will do, no matter what we go through, he will not walk away from us. He will walk us through it, and continue to transform us by it, until that day when we breath our last on this earth or the day Jesus comes back, and his work in us is complete. Once we accept the covenant and enter into it, whether or not we hold up our end of it fully—namely, to give him our love and worship, our lives, our everything—he will uphold his.

A parting thought. Yesterday evening, before I left for my friend’s house, I was listening to music, and a song came on—namely “Mountain of God” by Third Day. I first discovered Third Day—now one of my, if not my favorite, bands—in the summer of ’09. Fittingly, I discovered this song during our two-week family vacation that summer, among some of the tallest mountains on the face of the earth. It quickly became one of my favorites.

Thought that I was all alone
Broken and afraid
But you were there with me
Yes, you were there with me…
Even though the journey’s long
And I know the road is hard
You’re the one who’s gone before me
You will help me carry on
And after all that I’ve been through
Now I realize the truth
That I must go through the valley
To stand upon the mountain of God

This song, and the album as a whole—Wherever You Are—became a rally for me freshman year. Those songs kept me going. I still remember one night, listening to “Mountain of God,” when the bridge (no pun intended) hit me like a wall:

Sometimes I think of where it is I’ve come from
And the things I’ve left behind
But of all I’ve had and what I’ve possessed
Nothing can quite compare
With what’s in front of me

I couldn’t even imagine life here even being close to what I left behind, much less better. But it was something to cling to. It didn’t feel true, but I had to tell myself it was. And now…well, it’s not quite there yet, but it’s no longer an impossibility. I still don’t have all I had in high school—someone to pour into and disciple, a handful of close brothers I could be real with and go through life with—at least not quite to the degree I did there. But now I can be sure that God really does have greater things in store than I could imagine, here at this campus and beyond. The bittersweet side of finally feeling at home here is knowing that in a couple short years, it will be time to move on again, to say goodbye to everyone all over again, and move on to God knows what. But I know that he will continue to be faithful. He will have even better things in store for me beyond. And he will stick with me through whatever valleys I have to walk through to get there.

Today finds me thinking about home. Those of you who know me and some of my life story may be wondering, “Which place, exactly, are you referring to as home at the moment?” Exactly. My point exactly.

I was looking through some old pictures and stuff from a CD that I got at the end of my ninth grade year. It was a CD that the two guys who had been helping out that year in junior high boys’ boarding (9th grade is junior high at that school) gave each of us, with pictures, movies, and such from over the course of the year. The CD had been buried in various desk drawers for five years now, and I just finally copied everything off of it and started looking through it again, for the first time since I first got it. Man, I’d forgotten some of the things we did that year. I laughed at one ridiculous picture after another. Completely unrelated except by coincidence, I also spent a good chunk of time yesterday reading through a couple Word documents full of jokes that I’d gotten from one of those two guys that year. Talk about a trip down memory lane.

At the same time, I’ve noticed that the very house I’m sitting in right now, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has come to feel like home for me, between the month I spent here over Christmas and this past month here so far. I’ve noticed that, even though in many ways I have adjusted to life in the US, I still feel more at home in the Third World, even in a country that’s relatively new to me. I could get used to living here. Of course, it helps that this is where my family is. Which brings up another point. Even when, my freshman year, I was having a difficult time adjusting to Virginia Tech and America in general, Waxhaw, North Carolina, was a welcome escape, if only because there I was with my parents and my brother Jordan. When I’m with them, I’m home.

But one more is most surprising of all. I’ve discussed this in a previous post, but it still catches me off guard. Like most third-culture kids, I’ve often wondered just how to pin down what home is. (Thus, this post.) But one, perhaps somewhat cynical, definition that came to me once was: home is any place you feel homesick for. I’ve left behind many such places. There can only be one conclusion, then, when I realize that I miss the church community I am part of back in Blacksburg, New Life Christian Fellowship. I see posts and photos on Facebook. I watch a video by one of the staff, sent out to new leaders to prep for the fall. I talk on the phone with one of our pastors, who recently took a new job in Orlando. We sing a song at church here that we do a lot at [nlcf], and I catch myself wishing I was worshiping alongside my brothers and sisters in Blacksburg. Last week I volunteered to help with sound while I’m here because the church is short-staffed during the summer. Sitting behind that console on Sunday took me back to that little building on Jackson Street, where I’ve mixed more than a few church services (not to mention a couple concerts that were…a little different from those church services.) It was also telling to discover that half of the t-shirts I brought with me this summer are sporting maroon and/or orange, with the VT logo. Little reminders, here and there, that [nlcf], and Virginia Tech as a whole, have become (yet another) home.

How do I reconcile all these? Every one of them (and this is by no means a comprehensive list) has some claim to being home, to some degree or other. This is the reason for that age-old question that every TCK is faced with: Just where is home? Because in truth, all of them are.

But the deeper answer I have come to is that there is one home that eclipses them all.

One of my favorite passages of the Bible is Hebrews 11 (which I firmly believe should include the first several verses of chapter 12—but don’t get me started on that.) In there is a set of verses that was somewhat of an anchor for me my freshman year.

It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance. He went without knowing where he was going. And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.

Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God…

All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Hebrews 11:8-10, 13-16 (NLT)

We are foreigners here on earth. Now, I know a thing or two about being a foreigner. I was a foreigner where I grew up, I’m a foreigner here, and I may as well be a foreigner back in America. During that year, this passage became very real to me. But even when I do feel at home down here, I think it’s just as important to remember where my true home is.

To bring it back to that definition of mine—I think, whether we are aware of it or not, heaven is the place we are most homesick for. I say heaven, but what I really mean is the new creation at the end of time, the new heaven and new earth, when everything is the way it should be again. Ever since our first parents left Eden, we have been homesick for Paradise. And we get glimpses, now and again, even in the things on this fallen earth.

A quote has stuck with me ever since I read it—not in its context in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle (which I did many, many years ago, and had long since forgotten) but since I read it in John Eldredge’s Epic a couple years ago. In this last installment of the Narnia series, as Narnia falls into chaos, the characters escape into a new world. Paradise. The unicorn blurts out,

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”

The reason we love Blacksburg or Chiang Mai, the Grand Canyon or the Himalayas, is that they sometimes look a little like our real home. Maybe I was onto something after all. Everything we love about a place, everything we miss when we leave it, is homesickness.