Rollcall
Thursday (November 27)
Rollcall
Psalm 87:3, 6
Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. … The LORD records as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.”
While this Psalm has future-physical implications that I can’t wait to experience, the present spiritual implications are just as precious. Look at the poignancy of that line again: “This one was born there.” Wow, what a picture! Friend, where do you call home? I was born in Dallas, Texas, while my father finished his seminary degree at Dallas Theological Seminary, but my parents moved to Cary, North Carolina about seven months after I was born, so I have very few memories of Texas. I did, however, grow up loving those Davy Crockett movies, and I’ve always felt a little streak of that free-spirit, don’t-tread-on-me, Texas-sized independence running through my veins. But North Carolina has been my home for decades now. Even when I’ve tried to leave, even when I moved to Wales for a year to chase sheep and get lost in the hills, or when I spent a summer swimming in the cold Vermont Mountain streams praying for the LORD to provide a job opportunity there, God keeps calling me back. And, truth be told, whenever the plane I’m in lands back at Raleigh Durham Airport, or whenever I’ve been driving for hours, crossing over state lines, and finally encounter that familiar green welcome sign, “Welcome to North Carolina!”, I heave a little sigh of relief.
But when Almighty God looks down on us, friend, even though He placed us in the culture and context and county that we call home, if we were to open the registry of Heaven and flip to our last name, we wouldn’t see a scribbled-in-ink description like “Born in Dallas—son of Stephen and Marsha” or “Born in Paris—Daughter of Pat and Pierre,” or “Born in Hogansville—son of Skeet and Virginia,” but we’d see the more defining, more wondrous declaration of our birthright and citizenship etched-in-blood: “Born in Zion—child of the King!”
Today, as you serve right where you are with all you are, making the most of the community God has placed you in, remember your hope of glory as described in Philippians 3:20-21: “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.”