In the recent movie Arrival, enormous spaceships settle in the atmosphere above twelve locations around the world. There is a purpose for the coming of the visitors from an extraterrestrial place—but that purpose remains unknown! The authorities obtain the services of a linguistics specialist in order to communicate and find that purpose.

For over three years the disciples had wandered from town to town, sometimes with Christ and sometimes without. They had left their homes to become sojourners, to live in temporary dwellings. On the last Passover before Christ’s death, they sat together in the upper room of another home that was not theirs and they listened, as Christ told them, “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2). Christ was not talking of another temporary dwelling, but an abiding place that would be permanent and everlasting.