Returning home. If the success of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” pulls any weight, it seems we can’t get enough of these homecoming tales: to the tune of $700 million at the global box office in only 12 days. The there-and-back-again saga is nothing new, but we fall for it every time. So what is it about a return journey that resonates so deeply? What in us longs for a place we belong, even as we go about our domestic routines?

I suspect we are longing for both heaven and earth. As Christians, we anticipate heaven and its coming glory; but deep down, we know we’ve been made for earth. Not earth as it is now. But earth as it will be. C.S. Lewis puts a finger on the ache in his sermon “The Weight of Glory”:

“In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you — the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence… the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name.”

But we’re trapped in the middle. Stuck on an island that we know isn’t home but must be for a time. And on this island, we get glimpses and reminders of our Ithaca, the house not made with hands, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (2 Corinthians 5:1; 1 Peter 1:4). Whenever we try to grasp the things and the people that give us this glimpse, we end up disappointed. C.S. Lewis continues, “These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

That’s the paradox. The ache is real because the home is real. The things of earth point to the real promises of paradise: joy in the One we were created for. A world made right. The home we’ve always wanted. The place we really belong.

But here, the plot twists. Because the-world-made-right is still the world. Heaven comes back to earth. The cursed garden becomes a city. We were made for heaven, yes, but heaven surprises us by returning as the-world-made-new (2 Peter 3:13). As Dr. Matt Marino observes, “It appears not that we are going ‘up’ to heaven, but that heaven is coming ‘down’ to earth.” God is in the business of restoration, not demolition. We long for a heavenly home, which ironically, is right at our feet, groaning, longing, eagerly awaiting redemption (Romans 8:19-20).

So what are we to do? We innately sense that our current home is not the actual one. We long to sail the ocean, sensing that Calypso’s island is not our true destination. But yet, we are marooned on this shore. Do we construct an Ithaca on the beach? Do we pine away until death provides passage to the other side? The answer is found in the balance.

Trying to create heaven on earth, or wishing to escape all ties to the world are opposite errors. The first error puts us in the place of God, responsible for doing only what God can do and minimizing his role in the picture. The second overlooks the beauty and goodness still left in the world and our duty to steward and restore our patch of earth.

Our hope is not in our attempts to save the world or flee from it. Instead, our mission is to be faithful to our portion in life, while leaving the outcome to God. Dr. Marino rightly observes, “But the hope is not in the glory of the present structure as an end in itself, but in the glory of the One to whom it points. ... In light of such a glory, we need not choose between pilgrimage and productivity.”

Like Odysseus, we long to reach our true home. We feel a sense of joy when the sandals of our wandering hero touch the rocky shores of Ithica. When the struggle is over and the years of waiting and longing come to their final end. One day, heaven and earth will be united. One day, our souls won’t be torn between the land we steward and the place of God’s special presence. One day, we will finally return home.