Hoping for Home

by Heather Tietz

For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees? But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.

Romans 8:24-25

More than 400,000 children in the United States are waiting for a permanent home. They reside in Foster Care families, hoping that some day they will have a permanent and safe place where they will be cared for and loved.

We too are a bit like foster children. Before knowing Jesus, we were alone in our depravity, abused and abusive to others. We suffered and others around us suffered too. We neglected God. We were not His child. But then, at some point we turned ourselves over to Jesus. We gave up trying to live right on our own and God claimed us. He adopted us for His own.

God has chosen us, but we are waiting to move in to His house. Waiting as our bodies age. Waiting as we stumble around temptation. Waiting as a fallen world pains us. But the apostle Paul says, “Have hope!” We can look ahead to the permanent safe place God is preparing for us, a place where we will be cared for and loved, a place freed from heart breaks and physical breaks, from burdens, from temptations, from sadness of any sort. We have more now in Christ then we had before, but life here is only a shadow, a dim view, of what is ahead in Heaven. How big is your imagination? God will out do it!