Maybe you are a happy traveler, ready for the next adventure wherever, whenever. I am not. I am much more of a hobbit. I like regularity, home, second breakfast, and no adventures. Yet here I am, a non-Spanish speaker very far from home. I have no idea how many people I’ve offended; hopefully not as many as I fear.
Some things are the same as in the USA, yet strange even in their sameness. American music from the 80’s and 90’s is played everywhere. Ordering coffee and checking in to the hotel follow the same pattern, so I can guess when we’re talking about size of drink (grande!) or the WiFi password. The Subway restaurant smells exactly like a Subway in the USA, though I can't read the menu. I found a non-Catholic church near-ish my hotel and showed up. They did their very best to welcome me. They played a song that had the same tune as “Bless the Lord, Oh my soul” and I think was a translation.
But things are still so different. The architecture and streets are...different. The food is different. At the church service, the interpretive dancers came out at some point and then there was (I think) a prayer I couldn’t follow at all. I decided to give it up and slip out as it was simply unintelligible to me.
The people here in Manizales are home, have all the implicit knowledge of how to operate, and probably see Manizales as how things are. But I do not. In Sylva I am home in my own house and family. Someone from Manizales who was dropped in Sylva would no doubt feel the same sense of being out of place.
There are a lot of things I can take away from this experience, but the one that comes to mind on this Lord’s Day is my longing for my eternal home. That is, the place that I ultimately long for, and where I really belong. Even in Sylva, we have conflict, trouble communicating (just between my wife and me, never mind anyone else!), and so many things that are not as they should be. We have sickness, sorrow, pain, and death as a result of our sin and God’s just judgment. While this is our lived experience, we who are in Christ and trust him to forgive our sins and adopt us into the family of God, have hope for better. The book of Revelation gives us a vision of God making all things new.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” - Revelation 21:1-4
To paraphrase Samwise Gamgee, my fellow hobbit, all the sad things will be made untrue.
It is my hope that this includes these barriers that divide us such as language, place, and culture, so we can worship and live together well in the new heavens and new earth, apparently in the one city of New Jerusalem. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.
