As many as 400,000 Central American migrants try to enter the U.S. every year. By the time they reach the Mexico-U.S. border, they’ve made a perilous journey, enduring a constant threat of assault, rape, robbery, or kidnapping by criminal gangs and corrupt police. 

Why risk that journey? They’re running from hopelessness, from violence. They’re longing for a better life. A future. A home.

Those of us with no reason to run sometimes forget that we’re nomads too. The Bible describes believers as “strangers on earth . . . 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).

Maybe we’re too comfortable. Every morning we should long for heaven, not just our first cup of coffee. We should willingly endure our hardships—after all, we know our suffering will one day be swallowed up by joy. We should help our fellow travelers; instead, we check our watches and wallets and decide we don’t have help to spare. We shouldn’t fear to cross death’s border . . . but our hearts still cling to earth’s brief pleasures.

God is ashamed of us. And yet, he loved us by sending his Son. Jesus left his throne to join our pilgrimage. A stranger to sin, he carried ours. Wrapped in shame and pain, he crossed death’s border. He won for us a heavenly country. He teaches us to serve our fellow travelers. He equips us to one day bid a cheerful farewell to this world because a better home awaits.