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Good morning, I was born in Nigeria, but have lived in England since I was four, so I couldn’t tell you who I wanted to win in yesterday’s World Cup match between the two countries I call home. In the end, it was England’s day, scraping through on penalties after Nigeria had dominated for much of the game. Well done the Lionesses! Sporting contests where nations go head to head can provide a way in to far more than the game itself. Described by some sociologists as quasi-religions, sport can be an outlet for the human need to feel belonging, to be part of something greater than ourselves. In sport, we experience rituals such as singing anthems, donning national colours and wearing icons and emblems that tell us something about what we value and who we are: the three lions; the super falcon. Winners and losers, heroes and villains; births and deaths, re-births and re-incarnations. When it comes to my national identity, I feel fully Nigerian and fully English; able to see the richness – and the faults - in each culture: to love both my mum’s jollof rice and an English fry-up; to have the entrepreneurial spirit of my birth country and the dry humour of my adopted home. To see the value in an orderly queue and the beauty of dancing to loud music for no reason. But there’s a tussle that can go on when you’re a dual citizen. Yesterday’s game heightened my sense of double consciousness – the dual perception described by civil rights activist W.E.B Du Bois in reconciling his African heritage with being shaped by and brought up within a European society. St Paul may have been familiar with this concept of ‘two-ness’ – as both a Hellenistic Jew and a Roman citizen, as reflected in the Acts of the Apostles. But for Christians there’s yet another identity – the idea of being citizens of heaven, belonging to some other – and otherworldly – place. The New Testament highlights the tussle that goes on between the two, recognising that our temporal reality – the very stuff of life – can tempt us to take our eyes off an eternal prize. Christians believe God requires us to fully engage in the here and now of our earthly identities, not dismissing the goodness and the earthliness that make us truly human, but doing so always in light of the immortal and the immaterial. I believe the kingdom of God isn’t about jettisoning us to some other place but is about our common home being turned right way up. Perhaps dual citizenship may not really be about passports or patriotism at all – but about seeing things from a transcendent perspective: beyond the football matches and towards what has lasting value. Who we are, where we’re really from and what counts in life’s big, beautiful game.