groanings for heaven

Sitting in accounting class this week, I was bombarded with bad news. My teacher told us of corruption in businesses, bankruptcy in famous corporations, rampant selfishness and greed for money, and countless cases of cheating and deceit as a result. Hearing it all made me feel sick. "It's all about money," My teacher told us again and again. "Here's how to get a job with a six figure salary...If you can get that, then you know you're successful."

My heart sank. All of these permeating lies grieved me. What a broken, empty, messed up world! I wanted to stand up in class and scream that wealth and reputation are not what this life is about. It's about Jesus! Success isn't a good job and more money. It's being found righteous in Jesus by grace. We don't even achieve it by our own effort. Having a good life means losing it now for the joy set before us. It doesn't mean conniving others to get a better position at work. Why do we keep striving for useless things?

Everyone is longing for something. Something better or something more. Sadly, so many people nullify their longing with trivial things, attempting to fill the void with temporary pleasures, when the longing is only fulfilled by Jesus in Heaven.

The more this surrounding world breaks my heart, the more I long for my true Home. I want to go there. To find eternal satisfaction for all these yearnings. And the more I want to go there, the more I don't want to rust in comfort, wealth, and prestige while I'm still here. I want to live this life for that place, wearing myself out following and making much of Jesus. If it means poverty, let me go there that I might long more for treasures in Heaven. If it means rejection, may I remember Jesus on the cross and cling to it tighter. And if it means death, let me embrace it as gain.

The Christian life was not supposed to be comfortable and affluent. Jesus says the rich man has a hard time even entering the Kingdom of Heaven let alone living for that Kingdom. No, the Christian way is different and harder. It's a daily act of losing ourselves because we have everything in Jesus. David Brainerd, a missionary to American Indians in the 1700s, wrote about his suffering in relation to eternity. "Such fatigues and hardship as these serve to wean me more from the earth; and, I trust, will make heaven the sweeter."

I've been recently listening to Andrew Peterson's song, The Far Country, which so vividly portrays the reality of this fallen world. Peterson's heart cries in the midst of it though, saying "This is a far country, not my home." May these words shape us.

I can see in the strip malls and the phone calls

The flaming swords of Eden

In the fast cash and the news flash

And the horn blast of war

In the sin-fraught cities of the dying and the dead

Like steel-wrought graveyards where the wicked never rest

To the high and lonely mountain in the groaning wilderness

We ache for what is lost

As we wait for the holy God

I was made to go there

Out of this far country

To my home

Oh how I long for that place and that day when we see Jesus and all our striving is fulfilled!