Far From Home

A field guide for exiles on mission

By Niki Kirby

Almost ten years ago, my family and I decided to make our home in paradise. Or at least, the pastel-colored, spring break getaway version of paradise that many people dream about. If you’ve never heard of 30A, a scenic collection of communities on Florida’s panhandle, you really should come visit. As a local now, I’d say paradise might be a bit of a stretch, but it is certainly a pretty cool place.

It’s the kind of place that’s almost too pretty. So much so that nearly 30 years ago, Hollywood took notice while scouting locations for a little movie called The Truman Show.

In case you missed it, The Truman Show follows Truman, a man who, from birth, has unknowingly been the star of a reality TV show. Every aspect of his life, his home, his relationships, his entire world is part of an elaborate illusion, carefully designed to keep him from ever questioning what was real. If you haven’t seen it, you really should, and you’ll have to forgive me for spoiling the ending. But in my defense, you’ve had almost three decades to watch it.

As the movie unfolds, Truman starts to notice small irregularities in his seemingly utopian existence. Little things that just don’t quite make sense. When he questions those around him, he is met with gaslighting and distractions that work, but only temporarily. Eventually, he just can’t shake the feeling that something is off. Things are not as they appear.

By the end of the film, Truman sails to what he believes is the edge of the world only to discover it’s a massive theatrical set.

The show’s creator presents him with a choice: stay in the safe, secure, manufactured reality he has always known, or step into the unknown. It’s a compelling offer. No one would have blamed him for choosing comfort and familiarity over the great unknown.

And yet . . .

After a gut-wrenching moment of hesitation, Truman makes his choice. With a knowing smile, he delivers his iconic line: “In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night.”

Truman wakes up to the truth; his world was never truly home.

And neither is ours.

Truman’s world was too perfect. Everything was controlled, predictable and carefully curated to keep him content and unaware. Our world, on the other hand, feels like the opposite. I can’t imagine a person on earth who would describe our current cultural moment as peaceful. I don’t know about you, but I feel bombarded daily with uncertainty, anxiety and chaos.

Things aren’t predictable; they’re unraveling. What once felt stable now feels fragile. The tectonic plates seem to be shifting beneath our feet, and many of us are struggling to find solid ground. But here’s the thing: Just like Truman, many of us are also waking up to the fact that something is off.

Can you feel it? Can you sense that the world is shifting? Shaking, even? Have you noticed the anxiety, overwhelm, confusion, exhaustion? Even despair is rampant in ways that feel new. Has it ever occurred to you that all these things together might not be random? That we aren’t the first people to feel displaced, unsettled and unsure of what exactly is happening or where we belong?

What if the unease we feel isn’t random? What if the shaking we sense isn’t meaningless? What if the Bible doesn’t just acknowledge this, but actually has a word for it?

It does. And it’s called exile.

A BLUEPRINT FOR EXILES

Exile is the wound that runs through the Bible’s story. It is the ache of leaving home, the weight of being cut off, the restless longing to belong again.

It begins in a garden. Humanity was made to walk with God in a place where everything was whole. But with one choice, trust was broken. The garden gates closed. Humanity stepped east of Eden, carrying with them both memory and loss. From that moment on, we have been homesick.

The pattern keeps repeating. Cain spills his brother’s blood and becomes a wanderer. At Babel, humanity tries to build a tower to the skies, only to find themselves scattered, voices fractured into many tongues. The story circles back, again and again, to people estranged from place, from one another, from God.

Israel’s story is a tapestry woven with exile. Abraham wanders, a stranger in a strange land. Joseph is torn from his family and sold into Egypt. Generations later, the whole nation is enslaved there, crying out for freedom. They are led out at last—but not home. Instead, they wander the wilderness, suspended between promise and fulfillment.

Even when they reach the land they longed for, exile is never far. Empires rise and fall, sweeping them away. Assyria scatters the north. Babylon burns the temple and carries the south into captivity. By the rivers of Babylon, the exiles hang up their harps and weep, asking how they can sing songs of home in a land that isn’t theirs.

And yet, in the middle of the sorrow, prophets whisper hope: “God has not left you. He will bring you back.”

Centuries pass. The people return, but not all the way. The land is theirs, but not really. Foreign flags still fly overhead. Home feels like a half-promise. The wound of exile remains.

Then comes Jesus. His life begins in borrowed space, laid in a manger. As an infant, He flees as a refugee. As a man, He says He has no place to lay His head. Even at His death, He is taken outside the city walls, cast out. On the cross, He bears the deepest exile of all—the sense of being forsaken—so that the way home might be opened for humanity.

The early Christians saw themselves in this pattern. They called themselves “strangers and exiles,” scattered like seeds in the world. They knew the ache of not fully belonging, but also the hope that exile would not be forever.

The Bible ends where it began: in a garden. The river flows. The tree of life stands tall. God dwells with His people once more. No more wandering. No more distance. No more exile. Home, at last. This is the future all believers have looked forward to.

But where does that leave you and me? What about this present time we find ourselves in?

Exile isn’t just a historical event; it’s a spiritual reality we are living in right now. Exile isn’t just about being physically displaced; it’s about knowing deep down that you don’t fully belong where you are.

Many of us feel it. The disorientation. The longing for stability. The questions about where God is in the chaos. As unsettling as this all can be, what if there’s a purpose to being in a season of exile? What if in God’s infinite wisdom and goodness, He has formed a plan so counterintuitive, so radical, that it just might change the world?

The story of Scripture doesn’t just give us a history of exile; it gives us a field guide, a blueprint. The stories of exile in Scripture fuel us with the hope and the encouragement we need to press forward when we feel homesick for the peace and joy of complete oneness with God.

In the Book of Jeremiah, God’s people found themselves in a place they didn’t want to be. Exiled, displaced and desperate for rescue. Jeremiah, often called “the weeping prophet,” grieved deeply over his nation’s rebellion against God. A fitting response to some of what we’re witnessing today.

One of the most quoted verses in Scripture comes from this book: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11). This verse has often been misused by those who seek a prosperity gospel without context. In reality, these words come at the end of a letter Jeremiah wrote to the first group of Israelites taken captive in Babylon.

Their entire world had just been upended. They longed for rescue—for a quick return home. But instead of promising immediate deliverance, God gave them a surprising command in the form of two words: “Settle in.” While this may sound harsh, sometimes the path out of pain is not a short one. Humans have never done well without the comfort of a quick fix.

Often, we ourselves offer platitudes like “It will be okay” to those who are suffering, rushing past the reality of their pain in an attempt to make them feel better—even when nothing is actually better. But God doesn’t do that here. He acknowledges their plight. He knows their exile, though temporary, won’t end quickly. In fact, He is the One who allowed it. He knows that the only way out is through.

They wanted rescue. God gave them roots.

They wanted escape. God gave them endurance.

Though He didn’t give them immediate deliverance from exile, He didn’t leave them without help. God didn’t abandon His people to wander aimlessly without hope. He gave them instructions, a way not just to survive, but to remain steadfast and faithful in a foreign land. And those instructions hold just as much relevance and hope now as they did then.

One of the most powerful realizations about the Bible is that it’s not just an ancient collection of stories; it’s a blueprint for exiles. Written thousands of years ago, its wisdom is strikingly relevant to our current moment in history.

Jeremiah 29:1-14 is part wake-up call, part strategy and part love letter, all packed into 14 short verses. It does not offer false hope or ignore suffering. Instead, it provides wisdom and direction: how to live, how to lead, how to stand firm and how to stay faithful in a world that feels increasingly foreign, all while pointing to the unshakable truth: restoration is coming.

It is a field guide for thriving in exile.

And it’s exactly what we need right now.

A CREATIVE MINORITY

From the very beginning, God’s plan to redeem humanity has been through a set-apart people. In the Old Testament, this was Israel. In the New Testament, it became the church. God’s design has always been for His people to act as His ambassadors, radically impacting the world by reflecting His kingdom. Their mission: to make the world more like heaven (see Matthew 6:10) and to bring glory to God in everything they do.

In every generation, God calls a faithful remnant to live with a clear mission: to represent Him in all they do, filtering every action through the lens of “for the good of others and the glory of God.” He calls His people to be set apart from the culture around them. This was no small feat for the nation of Israel, especially when they were taken captive and found themselves as a minority in a hostile foreign land.

The faithful remnant chosen while Jesus walked the earth, 12 unassuming and unimpressive guys, Jesus called His disciples. The disciples of Jesus show us what it looks like to be in the world but not of the world; they displayed what it means to influence, not assimilate. Despite their small beginnings as fishermen and tax collectors, their faith spread like wildfire, reshaping history, toppling empires and leaving a mark that still defines civilizations today.

God has tasked His people to influence, not assimilate to, the world around them. To exist within a broader culture without sacrificing the identity and virtues of the faithful remnant to which they were called. A calling that remains just as true for us today as it was for them thousands of years ago. And it’s no small feat for us today, as followers of Jesus navigating an increasingly post-Christian world.

Living in a countercultural way, which goes against what is mainstream has never been easy for God’s people. To bring a piece of home to the culture of exile you find yourself in can cause quite a stir. But it is precisely that piece of home that helps us remember that we have a greater hope than anything this place of exile could offer us.

We have something precious and worth holding onto. And as we share it within the culture of exile we find ourselves in, we become culture makers, influencing the world around us—creating places of flourishing where there was once only wilderness—and adding to our number daily those who are exiles waiting to return home.

JESUS IS COMING, LOOK BUSY

Not too long ago, I saw a bumper sticker that made me laugh out loud. It read, “Jesus is coming, look busy!” I laughed, of course, because it’s funny. But it also resonated with me, because the times we’re living in feel so unprecedented that I’ve genuinely wondered if I might look out my window and see rainbow-colored horses or hear trumpets in the distance.

Honestly? It doesn’t seem that far-fetched.

Beyond a nagging sense that we truly could be living in the actual end times as prophesied in the Bible, another thought kept bugging me: If we are, now what? What does one do in a season like this? Build a bunker? Stockpile rice and beans (guilty on that one)? Stand on a street corner yelling “The end is near” to random passersby?

It’s a strange contrast to the rhythms of my everyday life of cooking dinner, washing laundry, paying bills. Life feels both astonishingly normal and undeniably off-kilter at the same time. That tension, the pull between the ordinary and the unmistakable sense that something bigger is happening, is exactly why we need to pay attention.

We are alive at a truly unique moment in history. Exile itself isn’t new, but our current age is. I don’t need to list all the advancements of the past century or even the drastic shifts of the last five years in the wake of the pandemic for you to recognize that things are fundamentally different right now.

The phrase “end times” gets thrown around a lot. Regardless of where you stand (or if you even have a stance) on eschatology, can we agree that this is a season of “now” and “not yet”? Jesus came to earth as a man, died for our sins and defeated death by rising from the grave. And yet, we’re still here, awaiting His final triumphant return. Like the time between the death of one monarch and the coronation of the successor, we are exiles waiting for our King to take His rightful throne.

I won’t split hairs over the specifics of my beliefs or even the things I’m still wrestling with, but this much I know for certain: we are living in the final stretch of time between Jesus’ first and second coming. This is the last season before the renewal of all things, and every single day that passes brings us one step closer to the culmination of history. That changes how I think about my time on earth right now. While exile isn’t something I would have intentionally sought for myself or my family, I can’t help but wonder, What is God up to in our generation?

As crazy as the world feels, when I stop to reflect on the incredible stories throughout Scripture and trace God’s faithfulness to and through the people of exile, one thought sparks undeniable hope: What if this moment in history isn’t just something to survive, but something to step into?

Here’s the truth: living as an exile isn’t some abstract biblical concept; it’s our present reality. We are living in the in-between, expectantly waiting for full restoration while carrying a mission in the meantime. But friends, we are not waiting for exile. We are already in it. And just like the Israelites, we are not abandoned. We are positioned. And we are not without help.

THE CHOICE

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned The Truman Show. Truman lived his entire life under a carefully crafted illusion, one designed to keep him unaware that he was part of a bigger story. We are in a similar moment right now.

For too long, many of us have been sleepwalking through our faith, assuming cultural Christianity was enough to carry us. We’ve lived unaware of the larger story we play a crucial role in. We’ve been lulled into complacency, numbed by comfort and caught off guard by the rapid shifts happening around us. Like Truman, we must wake up to our reality.

And then, we must decide. Will we be bold and brave enough to step into the truth? Will we embrace our roles in a much bigger story? Truman did it, and so can we.

We can wake up.

We can live with divine strategy.

We can stand firm in exile.

And no matter how relentless this journey may feel, one thing remains certain: the plans are still good. But plans aren’t passive. They require action.

Because the question is no longer: Are we living in exile?

The question is: How will we choose to live now that we are already here?

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NIKI KIRBY is a writer and entrepreneur who loves Jesus and people. Across home, business and ministry, her calling is to awaken people to their God-given identity so they can live boldly as they walk closely with Jesus. Her voice blends urgency, compassion and down-to-earth clarity. Niki lives on Florida’s 30A, balancing family life, real-estate projects and words. She loves cooking, reading, Christmas and Disney World. Her new book is The Garden of Exile: How to Flourish in a World That’s Not Your Home, from which this article is adapted.