A Perfect and Permanent Place to Belong

Everyone wants to belong. We go to great lengths to fit in. We wear the right clothes, say the right things, adopt the right ideas—all so we can find a place where people know us and welcome us with open arms and a smile. A place that feels like home.

I wonder if our need to belong is a major reason God created family. Observing families with young children can teach us much about what real belonging is. If you sit in a park and watch the interactions between children and their parents, it’s as if an invisible cord connects them.

• A rambunctious son darts off to play on the monkey bars. Minutes later, he comes running back to mom with his knee skinned and bleeding. He knows where to head when he’s injured.

• A father sits on a bench watching his little girl. She approaches him with a newfound playmate and announces she’s going to swing as she points to the playground. He nods and she skips off holding the hand of her friend. She knows where to find the comfort of authority in her life.

• A girl jumps rope excitedly with several friends. When a new child comes along, she suddenly feels left out and all alone. With tear-stained cheeks, she walks back quietly to the waiting arms of her parents. She knows where she wants to be when the hurts of life move in.

• A young boy exerts his independence by playing in the stream despite his parents’ instructions not to, and he throws a temper tantrum when they discipline him. The fit soon ends, though, and he again enjoys the company of mom and dad. He knows where he is loved, regardless of his actions.

• A toddler wanders off while her parents sit talking. She soon returns laughing and stumbling, with arms reaching out to them. She knows where home is—the place she belongs.

In family as God created it to be, children know where they belong. The invisible cord pulls them back home. It’s often a place of happiness and delight, but even when it isn’t, it’s where they always find unmistakable comfort and unending love—the belonging we all search for.

After children grow up and move away to begin their own families, home still draws them back. And when there is no longer family or a house to return to, they will continue to visit in their hearts and minds, because they need that special place to belong.

Though God places us in families, belonging with other people can be bittersweet due to the uncertainties of life. However, it is only a picture of a perfect and permanent belonging we can experience.

We all belong to God because he created us. The Lord told Job, “Everything under heaven belongs to me” (Job 41:11). He said to Ezekiel, “Every living soul belongs to me” (Ezekiel 18:4). The psalmist tells us, “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture” (Psalm 100:3).

Every person is “under God’s sovereignty by the right of creation.” God “defends them, as being his own workmanship. When, therefore, God pronounces that all souls are his own, he does not merely claim sovereignty and power, but he rather shows that he is affected with fatherly love towards the whole human race since he created and formed it” (Calvin’s Commentaries).

God wants every one of us to recognize that he created us and we belong to him. He wants to be the one we run to when we are injured, when we seek direction, when we hurt, when we need assurance of being loved, and when we’re simply happy that we are his. Because he created us, we belong to him even if we aren’t aware of it. But we won’t experience and enjoy that deep belonging we crave unless we run into his embrace.

A deeper belonging is realized when we enter into a relationship with Jesus. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead” (Romans7:4). This belonging “signifies a change of condition, state or place” (HELPS Word-studies). It means “to become the property of anyone, to come into the power of a person or thing” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon). Paul was saying that when we recognize what Jesus did for us on the cross and choose to live for him, we enter into a new level of belonging. We willingly come under his sovereignty, allowing him to be all that he wants to be to us.

Peter wrote to Christians that they were “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” (1 Peter 2:9). Belonging here means “completely obtain, i.e. as a full possession” (HELPS Word-studies). When we completely belong to Jesus, we can experience that warm and fulfilling family life in a better, perfected state with him.

Belonging is stronger when we have purpose. I always feel a greater sense of belonging when I have a task to fulfill, when people count on me, when I am a piece of the puzzle. And God has plenty of purpose for us: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). God created us to work alongside him. He created us with purpose.

This place of belonging will exist forever. We can enjoy this glorious experience throughout our life on earth as we walk with Jesus. Just as the Lord encouraged Joshua, he also tells us, “I will never leave you nor forsake you . . .the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:5,9).

The experience will not end when we die. Jesus said he was going to his Father’s house “²to prepare a place for you. ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3). Because we belong to him, he wants us with him throughout eternity as well.

It won’t be just a memory or a warm feeling. It will be our reality—our perfect and permanent place to belong.

Scripture quotations are from NIV.

Greek definitions and commentary notes are from Bible Hub. See Resources.

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