Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. In my life I had needed to travel a lot. Six years of Naval service took me to several countries around the world. Then after I got out of the service, I got a job with Harris Corporation and traveled to Nigeria. The travel to and from allowed me to see another four countries as I chose a new airline each time. Each time I flew into Nigeria, I would need to spend the night in the country I first landed to catch the connecting flight the next day. It was fun but lonely, for many times I traveled alone. Seeing great sites without someone to share them with is good and bad at the same time.
In all my travels, my soul longed to just be home, in the land of my nativity, where I understood the customs and the language. Where I was free to do things without fear of offending someone or causing an International issue by violating a local taboo that I wasn’t aware of.
In all my travels I was aware of one major thing. I was the alien in this culture. I didn’t belong here for I had left my country behind to travel to this place. I was the oddball, the different one, the one that people (especially in Africa) talked about.
In Jos, Nigeria, I made friends with a local family by sitting outside in the evening because my lodging was too hot to sleep. I would buy local fruit and sit outside to eat it. A man came over and we talked about many interesting things. His son (about 5 years old) came to sit with us. I was peeling oranges and feeding them to him a slice at a time. His left hand was patting my leg as I was filling his right hand with slices. He never missed a beat and I mentioned it to his father. He laughed.
“He knows you are not the boogeyman,” he said. “The boogeyman in Nigeria is a very big white man and you are too small to be him.”
I laughed as I fed him the remaining orange. In all my travels my soul always wanted to go home where I lived, where my family was, where I was blessed with certainty instead of uncertainty.
The soul was given to humans by God as He created the very first man. God breathed into the nostrils of man and he became a living soul. When the man was created, his soul was at home in the Garden of Eden. God walked with him in the cool of the day (Genesis 3:8). He was content there.
When he fell from grace and sinned, he was ejected from this place of peace and rest to struggle in the world. The ground was now cursed and he had to labor to be able to eat, live and raise a family. Man outside the grace of God is never at home. His homeland or habitation, if you want to call it that, was designed to be with and serve God. Psalms 26:8 “LORD, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth.”
The main truth here is that we will never feel at home in this world for it is not made for the righteous. We were made to fellowship with God and this world. There is a song I love to sing, “This world is not my home; I’m just a passing through. My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beacon me from heaven’s open door and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”
Hebrews 11:13 “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
As Christians, we shouldn’t feel at home in this world of sin. We should seek righteousness and peace with God, our Creator. This sin-cursed world should be something to endure until our final resting place is obtained. We should plainly seek to seek God and abide in His promises.
IPeter 2:11 “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;” Our soul cannot find rest in the lusts of the flesh. Our souls was designed for righteousness. Our souls should seek God and live for His approval with our life, then we can move on to a much better place… our true homeland.
