My husband’s eye doctor had just returned from London, and the two of them chatted a bit before his annual eye exam. When he asked where they had stayed, the doctor replied that she and her husband stayed in a flat they found on HomeAway, which has moveditshome to Vrbo.

Even though Vrbo doesn’t have quite the same ring as HomeAway, my husband and I like the concept, partly because our must-see site in any city we visit is its grocery store. We don’t want the Food Halls of Harrods or the Great Marketplace of Budapest. We want the Jewel equivalent, because a local grocery store provides clues to everyday life in our home away hometown.

On another visit to the Vrbo homepage, I was soon transfixed with the not-so ordinary hometowns where we could live in the moment—Old Venetian Harbor in Chania, Greece, or Catania, Italy, in a villa at the foot of Mt. Etna (okay, maybe not, with that active volcano thing going on) or the Mayan Riviera in Mexico come mid-February. If I believe Vrbo, my magical HomeAway promises me peace, rest, beauty—all conveniently located.

Convenience is a big selling point on Vrbo just as it is in life. We much prefer the neat and tidy over the messy and out-of-hand be it houses, lawns, people. The smallest detours upset my best laid plans. I want uncomplicated problems and straightforward solutions. What me—suffer?

As Christ-followers, we have an eternal HomeAway and its promises of peace, rest and beauty guaranteed by the One who went ahead to prepare our home for us. The gospel writer John begins chapter 14 with Jesus’ graced words to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (v. one) and then comes the better-than-Vrbo promise that “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” (vv. two-three)

The only thing left out of Jesus’ promise is convenience. Rather, just the opposite is guaranteed in John 16:33: “In the world you will have tribulation.” That’s the middle sentence of the verse, not the entire verse, but it’s where I live now—located next to tribulations and trouble and inconvenience—and combined with that is the tug to escape to my idyllic HomeAway, however fleeting a stay might be.

Then I reread all of Jesus’ in John 16;33. “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world,” and notice that tribulation sits rather incongruously between peace and take heart. Or perhaps not.

We come from a long line of strangers and exiles seeking a HomeAway, a heavenly one whose designer and builder is God. And all that going about in skins of sheep and goats and being destitute, afflicted and mistreated? (See Hebrews 11.) It would be incongruent if these were absent from Jesus’ peace and loving encouragement to take heart as we make our way home, his own little band who love him, seek him and long to be near him.

"The Master Has Come, and He Calls Us”
The Master has come, and He calls us to follow
The track of the footprints He leaves on our way;
Far over the mountain and through the deep hollow,
The path leads us on to the mansions of day:
The Master has called us, the children who fear Him,
Who march ‘neath Christ’s banner, His own little band:
We love him and seek Him, we long to be near Him,
And rest in the light of His beautiful land.