The inevitable call came on Thursday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. “Daddy, I want to come home.” It was Trae, calling from Arkansas, filled with homesickness after a couple of weeks with grandparents and friends. I knew that call was coming and, missing her myself, I did something incredibly spontaneous – which is out of character for me.

“Ask Grammy if she will meet me in Texarkana and I will come pick you up tonight.”

And that is what we did, arriving back home at 5:06 a.m. on Friday morning.

Do you ever get homesick on your pilgrim journey through life? Do you ever look around and think internally, “I wasn’t created for this world”? Are you ever overcome with the longing for your true home?

“All these people (the great heroes of faith) 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. 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” (Hebrews 11.13-16).

The next time you are overcome with a longing for your true home, remember you have good company. Scripture paints the great heroes of faith as people who lived with perpetual homesickness and an insatiable desire for heaven.

The words of James Rowe capture it well: “If for the prize we have striven, after our labors are o’er, rest to our souls will be given, on the eternal shore. Home of the soul, beautiful home, there we shall rest, never to roam; free from all care, happy and bright, Jesus is there, He is the light! Oft in the storm, lonely are we, sighing for home, longing for Thee, beautiful home of the ransomed beside the crystal sea.”