This past week has been a rough one. It started with a bombing at a highly public area, multiple people being murdered and countless others losing limbs and being hit with shrapnel. Later in the week, we were all stunned as a fertilizer plant exploded in West, Texas, killing first responders and employees, and leveling multiple buildings around the plant. So many people, within the last seven days, have experienced heavy, unrelenting, unexpected grief.

I wasn’t directly affected. No one that I love was hurt at the Boston Marathon. No one I know has died in the last week. Yet, all week, I’ve been feeling hurt…sadness…pain. Why? Because that’s what this earth offers. Hurt. Sadness. Pain.

When our world shows its true colors like it did last week, it only makes me more and more homesick. Homesick for what, you may wonder. Homesick for my true home: heaven. I love when Paul says, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,” Phil. 3:20.

Why eagerly wait for the Savior? Why sing so boldly, “this world is not my home”? Do we not eagerly wait because life here is so hard? So disappointing? So evil?

Sure, there are good things that this world has to offer. We’re here with our families & friends, with those who love us. We enjoy music and technology and the beauty of nature. But all of those things, they’re gifts from God (James 1:17). Every good thing that this world has, it came from God. So really, how beautiful heaven must be! Because, not only is heaven far greater than all of the great things we have here, but it is also free from all of the terrible things we have here: like bombs, explosions, death, terrorists, illness, pain, grief, tears.

I know there will be a lot of people asking where God is in all of this. There will be a lot of people asking how a loving God could allow all of this to happen. Instead, we should be thanking God for reserving a place for us that will be free from all of those things, and we should be thanking God in instances like these that remind us that this world isn’t our home–that this earth isn’t where our citizenship lies. So often we get caught up in the daily grind; in the routines of earthly living. We get focused on the here-and-now and the material, and we forget that this isn’t all that it’s about.

This week, I challenge you to thank God: thank Him for giving us the good things that we have here, but also thank Him for heaven–a place where we can be free from all of the bad things this place has. Thank Him because He has offered us a home greater than any place we could ever imagine. And thank Him for Jesus, who is preparing that home for us right now.

Our citizenship isn’t here, and weeks like this past one help us to see that even more clearly.