2 Corinthians 5:6

Paul, one of the earliest and most influential followers of Jesus, wrote this letter to a church he had founded in the Greek city of Corinth. In this section, he's wrestling honestly with the tension of living in a physical body while believing in a spiritual reality beyond it. To be 'at home in the body,' he says, is to be 'away from the Lord' — not in a hopeless sense, but meaning separated from the full, direct experience of God's presence he believed awaited after death. Remarkably, Paul describes his outlook as one of constant confidence — because he knows where the story is heading.

Lord, I confess I sometimes live as though this is all there is. Give me the quiet confidence Paul had — not recklessness, but the settledness of knowing where I'm headed. Help me hold this life with open hands, because you are my real home. Amen.

There's something quietly strange about being a person of faith who believes the best is still to come — and then waking up on a Tuesday to make coffee, answer emails, and sit in traffic. Paul knew that strangeness intimately. He's not being negative about the body or dismissing life on earth. He's being honest: this existence, as good and real as it is, is a kind of distance from the full presence of the one he loved most. The word he uses for 'at home' carries a sense of comfort, settledness — and he pairs it with 'away from the Lord.' You can be at home somewhere and still know it's not your final address. Here's the invitation: live fully in the body, in the ordinary and the difficult and the beautiful — but don't mistake this address for your permanent one. That's not fatalism; it's freedom. When you know where you're ultimately headed, the things that threaten to consume you — the promotion you didn't get, the relationship that fractured, the health scare that woke you at 3 AM — they still hurt, but they don't have the last word. You are a person in transit. Walk accordingly.