Lord's Day Devotion - Belonging

 If you have been an outcast, or displaced person or are an alien or foreigner and stranger in a country not of your origin, it can be very trying.  It can be disorienting.  It can be unsettling because one can never ever fully settle, or so it seems.

Even after decades spent in a foreign land, you are still seen as a foreigner and access to certain local citizens' rights, privileges and advantages may be denied.  So sigh ... that caused one to realize, "Hey, I'm not home yet!"  Heaven is my home and I'm just a passin' through, as a line of a hymn goes.

Paul reminded the Ephesians by telling them, 

"So you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household  of God" (Ephesians 2:19 ESV).

They entered, and so does each believer in Christ Jesus, the household of God where we belong.

How precious this is!

Belonging ...

Fellow citizen ...

"We ... have access ..."

This is

 "access in one Spirit to the Father" (vs 18).

And it is, 

" ... built on the foundation of ...Christ Jesus Himself ... the chief cornerstone"              (vs 20 ESV/KJV).

Access and whole-hearted acceptance into God's country and kingdom is a healing balm.  What's more, there's growth

 "into a holy temple in the Lord" (vs 21).

In this temple we are being

 "built together."

I repeat, "built together"!  It is all encompassing.  It is all comforting, too.  In these words is, 'belonging'!

We are

 "being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit".

Does this give you a great sense of rest and peace?  It does for me.

Jesus had had no where to lay his head (see Luke 9:58).  We may find some small flickerings of belonging in certain instances here on earth in an 'adopted country' but we look forward more to that city built without hands (see 2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV).  That city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God (see Hebrews 11:10 KJV).

This is where we belong and will no longer be strangers or foreigners.  I long for that day and that place.

There is a secular song that I came across.  It has an Irish lilt to it.  The chorus' lyrics run like this,

"This is my homeland, the place I was born in

No matter where I go, it's in my soul

My feet may wander a thousand places

But my heart will lead me back home to Donegal."

O course, Heaven is our Home and Jesus will lead us back Home to where He sits even now.

Jesus made this possible through His death and resurrection.  He built it.  The foundations are rock solid.

This Lord's Day, let's remember Him in the partaking of the broken bread and drinking of the wine.  He has made us belong.  Let's remember that and all He went through to give us acccess into His Kingdom and as fellow citizens and saints.

Thank You so much, Jesus!

                                                ~  ERC  August 2026  ~

Based on Ephesians 2:18-22 ESV/KJV.

Sing, On Christ the Solid Rock, I Stand, along with Reawaken Hymns, and This World is Not My Home, along with GleamHarmony.