The road is empty of vehicles. The landscape, still under snow, lies dazzlingly bright, unstained and trackless. Only the wind disturbs the serenity. Howling and groaning, it whips snow into frenzied twisters that brutally batter all in their path. The blue sky is hidden and the ubiquitous winter sun relegated to a luminous glow through the dullness.

We smile; the greyness reflects our mood. Lockdown has eased although our movements remain restricted. Most Mongolians, who are able, opt to stay at home with their families. And suddenly it hits us again – we are not a part of their families. We are not Mongolian. I know, it’s obvious, but there are times when, absorbed in friendships and the challenges of the day, we forget that we are foreigners in this land. However, this isolation accentuates the truth – we are outside people.

We dream of England, the land of our birth. We remember family and friends, happy times of celebration and walks along the North Cornish coast where the waves constantly rise in foaming crests only to fall flat on the beach. We remember the rocks where we stood to watch the sun descend as it lights the sky like a winter hearth. That moment was perfect. We want to hold onto it, making it stretch across time.

We love to return to the place of those wonderful memories. But, somehow, it’s not the same. Our memories are grander than the way things really are. Things have changed, the place is different to how I remember it; people have moved on or gone. Yet, beneath the memories, the longing remains the same – the desire to truly belong.

It is easy to mask our loneliness, or perhaps I could call it a sense of homelessness, by trusting that a loving family and a beautiful home will meet our longing to belong. To some degree they can and do meet that need. But families grow and change and homes come and go. Yet the desire to belong persists. Something in us yearns for a love that will last forever, for beauty that will never fade or diminish. But this world cannot satisfy that longing. It’s like we are strangers living in a place that is not our true home, living in a place where we reach forward towards a home that we’ve yet to experience.

Sometimes I feel exiled, detached and alone in this spiritually unwelcoming world. Then I remember Jesus’s words to His disciples before He went to the Cross. …if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

This is the home God has made for us, the place where He dwells, where we can live now and forever. By faith and through prayer, we inhabit that home now, the place where God can absolutely fulfil our deepest longings by His unending love and His undiminished beauty.

© copyright Gillian Newham 2021