Nearly a decade ago, when Thailand’s Suvarnabhumi airport officially opened, directors of the newly commissioned airport found themselves plagued with an interesting problem. There were people everywhere. But this was not to say the problem was too many travelers. The problem was that there were too many people who were not traveling anywhere. In addition to the number of travelers passing through Suvarnabhumi Airport each day—then roughly 100,000—there were more than 100,000 people visiting the ultra-modern airport each day—with no intention whatsoever of getting on a plane. They were there to take pictures, explore the buildings, and eat their sack lunches. “So many people are coming for sightseeing, and we’re pleading with them to stop,” said the president of Airports of Thailand. “They’re eating here and there, parking their cars in a mess.” In the beginning, airport directors were happy to see people familiarizing themselves with the place, learning their way around, and generally taking pride in the new airport. But as one official soon noted of the situation, “[I]t’s no longer familiarization—it has become a picnic.”
As a Christian, I am at times quite comforted by the places in Scripture that remind me I am only traveling through this world. There are many. “Hear my prayer, O LORD,” pleads the psalmist, “listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were.”(1) In the book of Hebrews, amongst the testimonies of the faithful who have gone before us, we are told that besides having in common a life of faith, these men and women shared the conviction that they were people living as strangers in a foreign land, journeying toward home. “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.”(2)
These verses become lifelines when I feel weighed down in homesickness, longing for the end of racism or cancer or the atrocities of war and displacement. I have the end of these things in sight, but it is an end I only see in part. Like a pilgrim clutching my ticket home, I live as one on my way somewhere else, aware that my time in the airport is merely a stopover. Peter puts it best: “[W]e are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”(3) Yet I know there is a risk in such moments of homesickness to live so focused on a new heaven and earth that I live oblivious to heaven and earth today. My attitude as a traveler can be one that finds the airport irrelevant and avoidable, which of course is not only irrational, it is problematic.
Other times, I live the opposite scenario. Far from the kind of traveler who holds my ticket close and thoughts of home closer, I am wholly at ease in the airport. I may live as a pilgrim, but one who is at times content to stay put. Here my time as a traveler more resembles a picnic than a pilgrimage.
The stories of the Bible give voice to the urgent sense of homelessness we often feel but can’t explain. They also remind the homesick repeatedly to be alert within the world we call home at present, to see the signs of a greater kingdom, and glimpses of God among us even today. Likewise, they urge us to look toward home and warn us when the airport has grown comfortable. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria.”(4) Centuries later Jesus pronounced: “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.” And again, he declared, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”(5)
The world around us is rife with signs of a God who ascends and descends, who comes near and fills this earth with the glory of a redemptive creator. This is indeed a place to explore, to take pleasure in, and to take care of, to see as good and impressive, and to live redemptively within its walls. Yet no matter how familiar we become with this world, no matter how fluent we become in its languages, we are still strangers in a foreign land. We are not here simply to picnic and remain forever content. Our days are fleeting. And pilgrims without destinations indeed cease to be pilgrims.
In his book Reaching Out, author Henri Nouwen defines a stranger as someone who is “estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self, and from God.” I cannot imagine an honest soul who cannot find him or herself in that definition in some way on any given day. At the sound of breaking news, in the silence of an anguished heart, even in the delight of beauty or the power of hope, there is a sense of alienation that wells up within us. But alienation only reminds us that we are aliens, and homesickness only tells us that we are not yet home, though we certainly live with glimpses. In this wonderful and terrible land, all is not as it will be; another kingdom is the end in sight. Until then, we relish the wonder of this place and look for signs of the kingdom among us even now and the king who is near. We long for promises in the distance and we wait estranged by hope. And with hope, we move toward Christ as pilgrims and he moves toward us as King.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Psalm 39:12.
(2) Hebrews 11:13.
(3) 2 Peter 3:13.
(4) Amos 6:1.
(5) Luke 17:20-21; John 14:3-4.
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