“I’ll be home for Christmas” is rarely the favorite song of global kingdom workers. Even if they can get home for Christmas, they probably aren’t sure where that is. And they are not the only ones.

One of the most awkward experiences I have all the time is answering the question, “Where are you from?” I grew up in a preacher’s family that moved around a lot. I lived in three cities before I was three. I grew up in two states in five cities and have lived in a third state and five more cities as an adult. If you ask me where home is, I can’t tell you. No place fits that description for me. The only place that was permanent in my growing up years was my paternal grandparents homeplace on a stock farm. But I never lived there.

In contrast, my wife grew up in Bogue Chitto, Mississippi. She lived in more than one house, but always in the same county within a few miles of extended family. She went to one K-12 school and one church all her childhood. Even though she has not lived there since 1986, it will always be home. It’s where her family comes from and remains. I’ve envied her sense of home all our married life.

I didn’t want to deprive my kids of having a place they call “home.” But if you were to ask the three of them where they are from, they would probably give you three different answers, and that with some difficulty. They would likely say, “That’s complicated.” Yet, for all of us, there is a power in the concept of home that is hard to describe.

We all long for a place to belong and a people who know us and welcome us in regardless. We want to fit somewhere. There are over 40 artists on iTunes with a song entitled “Home” (many of them doubtlessly covers of previous versions). Phillip Phillips, Michael Buble, and Daughtry have all had hits singing about home in recent years, just like many artists in earlier years. We all want to be “Home for Christmas” and long to be “Homeward Bound” like Simon and Garfunkel. There are endless songs with the word home in the title or the subject matter. T-shirts and home décor with the outline of a state and the word “Home” in the middle are common. We all long for home, yet home is sometimes illusive. Being homeless is one of the saddest conditions in our world.

I work in the world of global Christian service and almost everyone at MRN would struggle to tell you where home is, even if they grew up all their childhood in one house. When people move overseas and live in another culture for years at a time, they can’t really come home again. They return to find that they no longer fit. They aren’t understood. Part of them stayed overseas and they came back different people who will never feel fully at home in their country and culture of origin again. They may not talk about it, but they often feel out of place.

When people think about the sacrifices cross-cultural kingdom workers make, they rarely consider that the sacrifice of home is permanent, even though most workers return to their passport country at some point. This can cause all kinds of challenges in life from minor annoyances to major problems. Yet, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who will say they regret the sacrifice. Why?

One, there are massive advantages that come with living a cross-cultural life. It is expansive and enlightening and, when embraced well, can enable you to fit in everywhere better if nowhere in particular. In our globalizing world, that is a huge advantage.

But the primary reason why you won’t find people who have served cross-culturally complain about the sacrifice of home is that it was worth it. Seeing the impact of a life of kingdom service is worth the cost. They sacrifice home in this life to find home in a truer sense that no one in this world fully appreciates just yet. We have a homecoming when the new heavens and new earth are finally unveiled. When the kingdom of God becomes the home you live and long for, no other home ever quite fits again.

Like the Biblical icons listed in the Hall of Faith of Hebrews 11, global disciple makers have a sense of home shaped by the future, not the past.

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, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. (Heb. 11:13-16 NIV)

In fact, the temporal homes we love so much can be turned into idols that get in our way. Nationalism can become a false god that leads us to engage in or support evil in the name of preserving us over them.

I love home. I haven’t quite experienced it yet, but I long for it. My heart yearns for the day when the longing of a broken world and a weary people who find they don’t belong anywhere get what God created their hearts to desire—a home with him.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”(Rev. 21:1-4 NIV)

Sacrificing Home for a Home