I am an alien. This week we drove through the remnants of Tropical Storm Debby to our new home in Florida. It was almost like passing through some sort of chamber and into “the world beyond.”

We now find ourselves in a place where people, places, and things are unfamiliar. It’s both exhilarating and disconcerting at the same time. The roads are unfamiliar. The vegetation is unfamiliar. The TV stations are unfamiliar.

We are foreigners in a foreign land. 

Soon enough we’ll be settled in. Things will be familiar. We will be residents.

It has reminded me that I really am an alien. This world is a foreign land.

Heaven is my real home. I love the way N.T. Wright describes life after life after death. He says that when we get to our real home we’re not going to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp. A new heaven and a new earth will be created and we will live new lives, with new bodies, doing what it is we have been gifted to do best.

In the mean time, we are aliens. 

But our life here is not to be frittered away, wasted, or misused. It is to be lived like we are preparing for residence in the land that is to come.

That looks like this: 

• Living for God
• Living for others
• Using the gifts we’ve been given to the best of our abilities

I am an alien. So are you. Live like it.

What do you think the life that is to come looks like?