This poor world is a boarding-house in which we lodge for a night or two, but it is not our home. The furniture is not ours, the title-deeds are not in our name, and the lease will soon expire. Why then, do we fret over its broken chairs, or quarrel about the best rooms? The Christian's true estate lies yonder, where Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. Let us hold all earthly things with a loose hand, lest when the Master calls, we be found glued to the toys of the nursery, instead of ready for the palace of the King. The path of the Christian pilgrim is not strewn with flowers, but with thorns. He must expect to be misunderstood by the men of this world, for he speaks a different language and seeks a different country.
Beloved friends, you and I are passing through Vanity Fair, but we are not free to set up shop there. The true pilgrim buys none of the merchandise of the place neither its honors, its pleasures, nor its empty praise. He has his treasure in Heaven, where moth and rust do not corrupt.
A pilgrim must travel light. The more luggage he carries, the wearier he becomes. So, the Christian is called to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets him. Houses, lands, gold, and reputation are heavy burdens for a man who is bound for eternity.
This world is a wilderness, and though the desert winds howl and the fiery serpents hiss, the pilgrim need not fear. His God has sworn to bring him safely to the land that flows with milk and honey the better country of everlasting rest. Our Lord Jesus was the great Pilgrim who had nowhere to lay His head. If we are in Him, we must share His pilgrim spirit. The cross marks the pilgrim's pathway, but the crown lies at the end of it!
We are pilgrims and strangers upon the earth, and we do well to remember it every day we live. This poor world is not our rest, for it is polluted!
Our home is beyond the river of death, in the land where the flowers never fade and the sun never sets. Let us not build our nests too firmly in these trees that will soon be cut down, but keep our hearts loose from earthly things, that when the trumpet sounds, we may rise and enter into the joy of our Lord.
What is this poor dying world, that we should fall in love with it? Its smiles are deceitful, its riches take wings and fly away, and its pleasures bite like adders! The believer has been taught by the Spirit to call it what it is a broken cistern, a fading flower, a temporary tent. His heart is fixed on things above, not on earthly toys.
To the true believer, this world is a wilderness, dry and barren, full of serpents and thorns. He finds no lasting satisfaction in its broken cisterns. He is a pilgrim passing through, and though the road may be rough and the sky dark, he knows that every step brings him nearer to the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
[Charles H. Spurgeon]
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Micah 2:10 ... Arise ye, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.
1 Peter 2:11 ... Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
Hebrews 11:13 ... These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. ❤
