Our family enjoys traveling to visit and tour new places. Whether it’s a city in another part of the country, or another country altogether, we love visiting places we’ve never been. Many of our trips include learning about the history of a place and exploring the beauty of God’s creation. Often, the kids and I will do a unit study on a place, digging into its historical past and its unique culture before we visit. We’ll read both fiction and non-fiction books about the place where we are headed. We’ll learn about the food and talk about the meals we want to try. We’ll also research places to walk or hike during our trip, places where we can witness the creative hand of God. Then we’ll spend months preparing for and looking forward to our trip.
Last year, like everyone else, all our plans to travel were cancelled. I’ve since felt a strong tug to get away and explore the world. I recently watched a travel show about a place I was scheduled to visit this year, but has since been cancelled. As I watched the tour guide explore this place, I felt a twinge of grief. I felt sadness over missing a place I’d never been to before. I felt a longing to be in that place.
The Germans have a word for this feeling: Fernweh. It means a “longing for distant places,” coming from Fern which means “distance” and wehe which means “ache or sickness.” So literally, fernweh means “distance sickening.” It can also refer to the longing for a place you’ve never been to. A place you’ve long dreamed of. A place you know you’ll love.
Perhaps, even a place where you know you belong.
More and more, I have a longing for another place I’ve never been. This longing is shared by all believers, past, present, and future. It’s the place of our citizenship. The place where our Savior now sits at God’s right hand. The place where shalom is ever present and the glories of God are on magnificent display. The place that is our destiny.
Heaven. Our true home.
“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:21).
I’ve felt this fernweh more and more as the place in which I pilgrimage grows increasingly foreign to me. I’m reminded that I don’t belong and I never will. I’ve felt this longing more and more as I consider Christ and who he is and what it would be like to be in his presence. I’ve felt it as I grieve over my sin and long to be shed of it once for all. I’ve felt it more and more as I contrast this life and the one to come. The more my grip loosens on the things of this world, I long all the more for the next.
When my family and I plan a trip together, we spend time preparing for it. We learn all we can about where we are headed. We learn about the ways of the people and place. We set aside money to invest in the costs associated with the trip. We count down the days until we leave. Oh, that my heart would do this and more to prepare for life in eternity! Oh, that I would store up treasures in heaven, rather than invest in things that will not last!
The feeling of fernweh may one day soon pass once vacations and travel become the norm again. But I pray that my fernweh for heaven never ceases. May I always feel that “distance sickening” until the day I enter the gates of glory.
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:1-4).
