If you’ve ever read the book of Lamentations in the Old Testament, let’s just say its name says it all. It overflows with sorrow and despair. God’s people, the Israelites who had been living in Jerusalem, were exiled in Babylon. Time and time again they had rejected and turned their backs on God, resulting in the destruction of their beloved Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Now they were living as strangers in a strange land, taken there against their will. They didn’t fit in there. They didn’t belong.

But in the middle of the darkness and desperation, there it is in Lamentations chapter 3, almost leaping off the page: “Therefore I have hope: because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (verses 21-23).

Do you ever feel like God’s Old Testament people, exiled in a land where everything is foreign to you? Do you ever feel like you don’t quite belong in this world? That’s because your heart longs to be reunited with your Creator. You and I long to be in our true home: heaven. The author and theologian C. S. Lewis said, “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” We are longing for more. We were made for more.

          Therefore, we have hope. Jesus died to give us that hope. Because of him, soon we will be home.