Thoughts from Limboland

We’re moving this weekend. Finally! After closing on our house over a month ago and delaying the move on multiple occasions, the time has come. Right now, I’m looking at the towers of boxes piled throughout our small apartment—and it’s funny because it suddenly doesn’t feel like home anymore. Nor does the new house feel like home—  

It feels like we’re in limboland.

I read this morning in The Valley of Vision, “In a world of created changeable things, Christ and his Word alone remain unshaken.” Funny enough, those two words—”created” and “changeable”—have been on my mind this week. We’ve been packing (or throwing away) created things, material objects, that are useful for a time, but not ultimately, eternally necessary. I often think I should feel guiltier for disposing of prized possessions that once meant the world to me; but then I’m reminded that I can’t take them with me, that they were a sweet gift from God in just the right time.

Yes, created things are God’s good provision for a season (or perhaps a lifetime), but they eventually fade and give way to the eternal treasures that will remain. There’s been great freedom in realizing this as we’ve purged and packed. My home is not found in my stuff.

Low-grade anxiety has been my visitor this week, as the towers of boxes have grown taller, the house projects have continued, and the busyness of the day’s schedules has refused to slow. So many changeable, moving parts. So much shifting, morphing. So many factors outside my seeming control.

But God has used this changeable-ness to instruct my soul in his unchanging nature. He’s used the shifting to reveal more of his unshakeable truth. Amid the chaos, he is my peace, he guards me with peace, he keeps me in peace. I’ve found it a wonderful gift to be confronted with such earthly disarray because of the conviction that’s followed: My home is not found in perfect, earthly order.

As of tomorrow, our home will be across town. We’ll have packed one house, and left it for another. 10/20/30 years from now, we may be doing it again.

I’m okay with Limboland because it reminds me I’m made for a different Land. And that’s the Land, and its Lord, I desire to fix and focus on until the day I call it eternally, forever home.

(If you’d think to pray for us, we’d so appreciate it!)