Citizenship

I will never forget my first experience outside the USA. In January 1980, I spent three weeks preaching in Nigeria on a mission trip. I felt so far from home. The language was different, the culture and customs were different, the beliefs, the food, the laws-all different. No matter how hard I tried to fit in, I was an outsider; a stranger, an alien to that country.
After an exhausting journey back to the US and a long wait in the customs line, I handed the agent my passport. He looked it and me over thoroughly, looked at his computer files, stamped my passport and said some of the most beautiful words I ever heard, Welcome home. This stranger had finally returned where his citizenship was-home.

In preparation for this Sunday's outdoor worship celebration, I am studying about our citizenship. I am encouraged to know that there is a reason I don't fit into this world, I don't understand it's language, or it's culture-this is not where my citizenship is.

Don't let the strangeness of your surroundings get you down. If you are saved, then you are a stranger here in this foreign land. Get your passport ready, soon we'll be going home.

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, Eph. 2:19