this world is not my home...

 

So here is the story with our housing here at the MTC.  A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call...there was a crack discovered in our bathtub (in the apartment that we were assigned to), and there would be lots of drywall work, etc to go with it.  As a result, when we moved here we would have to live in temporary housing for the first week or so.  When we heard this news, we were a little disappointed but understanding, and we decided that we would be positive about the whole thing, even though it wasn't going to be ideal.

Long story short, we did move into the temporary housing (which was "old housing") for the first few days. The temporary apartment was small but they gave us 2 that were attached, so we had some more space.  There was also no shower or laundry, so we needed to use the "wash house" for that.  We put almost ALL of our belongings, food, and clothing up in our "real" apartment, and just kept the bare minimum with us down in our temporary place.  The maintenance guys here worked extremely hard to get our "real" apartment done for us so that we could move in before our classes start.  We cannot begin to say how much we appreciate their hard work!  A couple of the guys who were working on it are dads with families at home...and they stayed until almost midnight one night trying to get a lot done on it.  Wow.  What servants!

So anyway, on Friday morning the work was done and we were able to move in!  We are now almost completely settled, praise the Lord.  We are thankful.

So...what does the title of this post have anything to do with this, you might be wondering?  Well, as we were living in our temporary apartment last week, I was really struck that we were actually living out an analogy of an awesome spiritual truth!  (disclaimer:  I do realize that this analogy probably has holes in it and will break down at some point...but you will get the idea :) )


When we were living in our temporary apartment, we knew that it was just that...temporary!  We were very aware that it would just be for a very short time. 

Therefore, we didn't mind that it was pretty small...

I didn't mind that Nathan stuck forks in our "curtains" to hold them up...

Our girls could not care less that they had no pajamas (and had to wear their brother's tshirts to bed)...

It was really not a problem that we had very little living space...

And I had zero desire to unpack and put stuff in drawers!  Why waste my time in this temporary apartment when I could be up in our "new" place setting it up for us to live in? 

I thought this was all such a wonderful picture of having an eternal perspective.  It challenged me and really made me think...

When we realize that we are living in a temporary home (this world), we can put up with a lot!  We do not care to spend a lot of time and money on our earthly lives, because we know our time here is so very short. 

We want to be spending all of our time preparing for our forever home in heaven.  When we have a heavenly perspective it should affect the way we respond to unpleasant realities of this life.  It should cause us to be content with our circumstances here on earth!

An eternal perspective should cause us to live for this day...

and our REAL home!

 

 

I really want to emphasize that our temporary apartment was not bad at all.  We kind of enjoyed our time there!  But I will admit, it is very nice to be all set up in our new place now :)