Now & Not Yet: Bringing “Homeness” As We Wait For Home
“But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides” (2 Peter 3:13)
Home. What images come to your mind? For me, without fail, I envision my boyhood home in rural Cordele, Ga. Situated on acreage with a fishing pond, woods and a large yard, my home was a paradise for a boy. It’s funny but I remember my vision of heaven at the time very much paralleling my homestead. My thought was that life would be perfect if Jesus would come back when I was 10 and I could spend eternity playing football with friends in my heavenly yard (somehow I thought I would stay 10 forever that way!).
Just before he suffers martyrdom as Roman persecution against Christians is intensifying, Peter writes in his second epistle, “But, according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness truly resides” (2 Peter 3:13). It is not difficult in persecution to envision an escape to a new heavens and earth. What is notable, however, are two features of Peter’s vision. First, the sustaining context of new creation will be one of righteousness. The frame and form of our future is a pervasive, permeating righteousness.
Righteousness is not simply characterized by doing the right thing, rather, in its fullest sense, it is that everything is right or perfectly aligned with the character of God.
Therein lies true moral integrity. Secondly, Peter uses the phrase “truly resides” to describe the quality of righteousness. In Greek, the word is katoikeō denoting the quality of “being at home”. Literally, righteousness will be at home in new creation. We, ourselves, will, for the first time, be fully at home.
We need not wait for new creation, however, to find or establish little outposts of home here and now.
The delightful scent of fresh baked pastries wafting through the air beckoned me through the door and into an outpost filled with beauty and flavor, a fusion of art and craft. The well-clothed bakers flitted about the bakery ferrying ornately decorated cakes for special occasions and little pastries to accompany a beautiful afternoon tea. The bakers before me, I learned, were formerly enslaved persons who, once rescued, were trained in the culinary arts. They were setting things right in their own lives partly through the dignity of work and their own lives were setting things right in their society through the dignity of the bakery. It was a place in which “righteousness truly resides”.
In a world of chaos and killings, disputations and despair, our living must be filled with a vision for a place where righteousness is truly at home.
We bring integrating right-ness to bear across the landscape of our work and play, living and breathing, creating a place of wholeness and “homeness” for the myriad “homeless” in our world today. When our efforts at work create products that sustain human flourishing, we have mirrored a place where righteous is at home. The beauty of long-ago scribed notes springing from ivory adds life to the air and ears, an invitation to home. A cup of coffee coaxing shared moments and memories among friends embodies rightness and goodness, a hallmark of home. How might righteousness (the rightness of all things) truly reside where you find yourself today?
Written by Matt Benson
Matt Benson has been teaching and learning as a university professor for over 27 years, beginning first in New Delhi, India. He is particularly interested in seeing students live out Christ’s imprint in every aspect of their lives. Matt can be found enjoying fruitful conversations in far-flung locales such as Brazil, India, and England among others. He enjoys time with his wife, Melody, and three kids in Peachtree City, GA.