Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Hebrews 11:16 (NIV)
A City Nobody Earned
The car stops for gas somewhere past eleven at night, and the nine-year-old in the back seat wakes up and asks where they are. Her mother reads the exit number off the sign. That’s not the name of anything, and the girl knows it, so she asks how much longer. A while, her mother says. The girl pulls her jacket over her face and goes back under, and in three hours her mother will carry her inside and put her in her own bed and she won’t remember the stop at all.
The people this passage is talking about died on the road. They never got the things God had promised them. They saw them at a distance and welcomed them from there, and they said as much about themselves, that they were foreigners and strangers on earth, people without an address worth writing down.
Their eyes were on a better country, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
Shame was on the table, or that sentence wouldn’t need saying. From the outside, a life spent waiting for something that never showed up looks like a bad bet, and the people who made it look easy to fool. God puts his name beside theirs anyway and lets himself be called their God, knowing they died with empty hands.
The city is prepared. The sentence says it as finished work, and nobody earned it, which is harder to take than it sounds, because it leaves you with nothing to show God and nothing he ever asked you to show him.
A while, for the girl, turns out to mean three hours and her own pillow. For the people in this chapter it meant the rest of their lives, and no shorter answer came. Long waiting stays what it is, and it tells you nothing about the quality of anyone’s faith.
They died foreigners, with the promise out past the edge of what they could see. God let his name be spoken alongside theirs while they were out there. The city is prepared, and it is prepared for them.
A Prayer to Remember
Some of what you promised me hasn’t come, Lord, and I know exactly how long it has been. I’ve read the delay as a verdict on myself more than once. Put your name beside mine the way you did for people who never arrived, and let me get through today on what they had. A city, prepared.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
