For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
– Matthew 6:21
In just three more days, America turns 250!
A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of spending time in Croatia, exploring the places where my maternal grandparents were born, and the church where they were married. They emigrated to America in the early 1900s. As we walked in the places where they had walked before us, we tried to imagine the problems, challenges, and risks they faced that led them to leave their home and make a new life in America.
My grandparents’ faith and courage continue to inspire me. They came to the USA for an opportunity, a chance for a better life, and they found one here. The decisions they made more than 100 years ago made it possible for my brothers and me to be born in America. World War II created the events that would eventually enable our parents to meet, and then fall in love.
Somehow, profound hardship and tragedy became part of the story that allowed my brothers and me, and so many others, to live in this country during an extraordinary time in history. I am still amazed by it, and grateful beyond words.
I love this country, but for followers of Jesus, America is not our home. I guess you could say we have dual citizenship. I have a temporary USA Passport, but my permanent citizenship is of the Kingdom of God.
At this time in America’s history, followers of Jesus:
- Can be grateful for America without confusing America with the Kingdom of God.
- Can honor freedom without worshiping independence.
- Can celebrate citizenship while remembering that our deepest citizenship is in heaven.
Some 2,500 years ago, the prophet Jeremiah wrote this to the Jewish exiles in Babylon:
“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
God, through Jeremiah, wanted the people to influence and disciple the culture. They were His representatives, His chosen people, even in exile.
They were chosen to represent God to the world.
In the same way, we love our country best when we love it as apprentices of Jesus. Jesus told His disciples that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. We are uniquely capable of living above the daily squabbles and power struggles of the two prevailing political parties in America because our treasure and future is secure.
We are not free because we have no concerns. We are free because our deepest hope is not held hostage by the fight.
Our King is on the throne, and the Kingdom of God goes where we go. I wonder if my grandparents shared that perspective when they left Croatia. Did they know where their treasure resided?
Apprentices of Jesus know where the deepest healing begins. Political and legal solutions matter, and we should seek justice and wisdom in public life. But they cannot heal the deepest sickness beneath our brokenness. Only Jesus can do that.
This may not be our permanent home, but it is still a place we have been called to love. So we pray for its peace. We seek its good. We refuse to make an idol of it, and we refuse to give up on it.
Run the play. Let’s celebrate a country we love, and love one another well this Fourth of July.
Finding Our Place in the Story
What would it look like for you to celebrate America with gratitude, pray for her with humility, and live as a citizen of heaven?
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