My wife Renee and I recently returned from a week in sunny, warm Arizona. Winter this year seems very long and unusually cold and snowy. I can begin to understand why some people spend their winters in warmer climates.

While visiting family and friends we enjoyed the green grass, beautiful Palm trees and the different types of cactus. The absence of ice and snowy blizzards of Nebraska began to make my heart want to stay longer in Arizona.

But we reminded ourselves that we live in Nebraska. I was just a visitor in Arizona. Our home was in Nebraska. Pastor Pat has been preaching from the book of 1 Peter and in chapter 2:11 it says that we are to be sojourners and exiles. 

We are to have in mind that we are citizens of a heavenly kingdom. Our eternal home is not here. A sojourner is someone who resides (lives) temporarily here. 

When we stayed at the hotel in Arizona, we didn’t put up pictures on the wall. We didn’t paint the walls our favorite color. We knew we were just there for the night and weren’t staying forever.

The décor didn’t matter to us because we weren’t going to be around very long. That hotel room wasn’t our home.

In the verses earlier in 1 Peter 2 it says that “we are a chosen race (v9), a royal priesthood, a holy nation and a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness in this marvelous light.”

God has redeemed us and made us sons and daughters. We have a new heart and new affections. Our ultimate home is in heaven, the new Jerusalem where we will be forever with our Lord and Savior. 

Living in this reality will enable us to have an eternal perspective. Hebrews 12: 1-2 says, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

You don't see runners in a marathon carrying their golf clubs with them. They have one goal, and that is finishing the race as fast as they can! Everything else falls secondary to their primary goal of winning.

The danger of living without an eternal perspective is that we become weighed down with the barnacles and baggage of life and become unable to run the race. 

When we live with a mindset that this isn’t my home, we find that our attention and activity centers on glorifying God. The lens through which we see is focused on living in a way that honors and pleases God.  

Ecclesiastes says that apart from God, everything is striving after the wind. Solomon pursued all of earth’s pleasures and found them to be empty.

Ecclesiastes concludes in chapter 12: 13, “the end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” What a great reminder for those called by God and sojourners in this world.