Twenty-three years with the same company, a corner office with her name on the door, and a retirement package most people only dream about. “I know it doesn’t make sense,” she said, her eyes both terrified and alive. “But I finally understand—I was never supposed to get comfortable here.”
She had been reading Hebrews 11.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
Welcome to Our Journey Together
This is the first in a three-part exploration of what it means to live as strangers and pilgrims in a world that constantly pressures us to settle, to arrive, to finally plant our roots and stop this exhausting journey of faith.
The Uncomfortable Truth
We live in a culture obsessed with arrival. We pursue degrees so we can arrive at careers. We chase promotions so we can arrive at success. We save for retirement so we can finally arrive at rest. We even approach faith this way—checking boxes, completing programs, achieving spiritual milestones—all in pursuit of some imagined arrival point where we can finally exhale and say, “I’ve made it.”
But here’s what grips me about Hebrews 11:13: every person listed in this hall of faith died mid-journey. Abraham never saw the nation his descendants would become. Moses glimpsed the promised land from a distance but never walked its streets. These weren’t people who failed to finish—they were people who understood that the finishing line wasn’t where we think it is.
They “died in faith, not having received the promises.“
Read that again slowly. They died faithful, but they died waiting. They crossed the finish line of their earthly lives with their heavenly promises still unrealized. And somehow—mysteriously, beautifully—this was exactly right.
The Pilgrim’s Paradox
There’s a peculiar freedom that comes from acknowledging you don’t belong. I’ve seen it in missionaries who learn to hold their temporary homes with open hands. I’ve witnessed it in believers who’ve lost everything and discovered that their treasure was never in this world anyway. I’ve experienced it myself in those sacred moments when the temporary nature of this life becomes startlingly clear, and suddenly the things I was anxious about yesterday feel remarkably small.
The Scripture says they “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” This wasn’t a reluctant admission or a complaint about their circumstances. The word “confessed” implies an open declaration, a public acknowledgment. They wore their pilgrim status like a badge of honor.
Think about what a pilgrim is: someone passing through, traveling toward home, carrying only what’s necessary for the journey. A pilgrim doesn’t renovate the roadside inn. A pilgrim doesn’t put down roots at the rest stop. A pilgrim keeps moving toward the destination, even when the journey is long and the way is uncertain.
But here’s where it gets challenging for those of us living in comfort: being a pilgrim doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the journey. It means you don’t mistake the journey for the destination.
What Living Unrooted Actually Means
Let me be clear about what this pilgrim identity doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy a home, build a career, or invest in your community. It doesn’t mean you live in perpetual motion, never committing to anything or anyone. That’s not pilgrimage—that’s irresponsibility dressed up in spiritual language.
Living unrooted means holding everything in this world with appropriate looseness. It means building, planting, creating, and loving—but always with the awareness that none of it is permanent, none of it is ultimate, and all of it exists to serve a greater purpose than our comfort or security.
I think of the young couple who sold their dream home to adopt three siblings from foster care. “We realized we were building our kingdom instead of His.” They’re not homeless—they bought a different house, one that better serves their calling. But they’ll never look at a house the same way again. It’s a tool, not a treasure. A tent, not a temple.
This is the pilgrim’s wisdom: invest fully in the journey without losing sight of the destination.
The Holy Restlessness
If you’ve felt a nagging dissatisfaction lately, if you’ve looked at your life and thought, “Is this all there is?”—what if that’s not a crisis but a calling? What if that restlessness is the Spirit’s gentle reminder that you were made for something more than this temporary world can offer?
The faith heroes in Hebrews 11 “were assured of them, embraced them”—the promises they could see only from a distance. There’s a powerful progression here: first assurance, then embrace. They became convinced of realities they couldn’t yet touch, and then they structured their entire lives around those unseen promises.
That takes courage. It takes courage to live for promises you can’t yet hold. It takes courage to invest in an inheritance you won’t receive in this lifetime. It takes courage to organize your days, your finances, your relationships around a kingdom that’s not yet fully here.
But this is precisely the kind of faith that honors God—the kind that believes Him even when the promises remain distant, the kind that keeps walking even when the destination isn’t visible, the kind that lives as a stranger because it knows a better country awaits.
Your Pilgrim Path
So what does this mean for you today, right where you are?
First, take inventory of what you’re clinging to. What would devastate you if you lost it? Your answer reveals what you’re rooting yourself in. Pilgrims can enjoy possessions, positions, and relationships, but they hold them lightly because they know better treasures await.
Second, ask yourself what you’re building. Are you constructing monuments to your own comfort and security, or are you investing in work that will outlast you? Pilgrims build, but they build with eternity in view.
Third, practice holy detachment. This doesn’t mean emotional coldness; it means loving people and stewarding resources without making them ultimate. It means saying, “This is good, but it’s not God. This is a blessing, but it’s not my treasure.”
Finally, lift your eyes to the horizon. The faith heroes “saw them afar off”—they kept their gaze fixed on distant promises. What promises has God given you that haven’t materialized yet? Keep looking. Keep believing. Keep walking toward what you can barely see.
The Journey Continues
That woman who resigned from her corner office? She’s now running a nonprofit that serves trafficking survivors. She makes a fraction of what she used to earn, works twice as hard, and I’ve never seen her more alive. “I spent twenty-three years building a kingdom that was going to crumble anyway,” she stated recently. “Now I’m building something that will last forever.”
She discovered what Abraham, Moses, and countless other pilgrims have known: the courage to live unrooted isn’t about having less—it’s about being freed to pursue more. More of what matters. More of what lasts. More of what honors the One who called us to this journey.
You were never meant to arrive in this life. You were meant to journey faithfully until you arrive in the next. And there’s profound freedom in finally embracing that truth.
In our next article, we’ll explore the remarkable faith required to see promises from a distance and build your life around them. How do we maintain hope when what we long for remains perpetually on the horizon? Join me as we discover the difference between wishful thinking and biblical hope.
What about you? Where has God been inviting you to loosen your grip and embrace your pilgrim identity? Share your thoughts in the comments below—your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.
