The Land of My Sojourn (From several years ago)

Today is September 12, 2006. Five years post 9/11 but that is not what this is really about. September 12, 2006 is 8 weeks from what we’ve come to know as mid-term elections.

Election time each year always brings me to an acute awareness of my growing discomfort here. Not here in America. I do believe that we live in the greatest country in the world. What I do not believe, and my confession of this fact betrays my Southern upbringing, is that we are God’s favorite or His chosen people. The reality of the opulence of our country reminds my of the truth that to whom much is given much is required. And the stark veracity is that we’ve been given much in the way of freedom and resource and we’ve not made good use. But that is for another blog. Let’s get back to my discomfort.

The discomfort I feel “here” is just that. Here. In this world. In this frail, fragile, fallible body. Just HERE. Here, where people fly planes into buildings. Here where people still get cancer and still in the light of great faith and love for and from God still die. Here, where people just have to deal with all the stuff that muddles our days. Loneliness, poverty, wealth, business, having too little time or too much, remembering and forgetting and wishing we could just do more of the other. Sticky little hands that just want to touch your face. Small, innocent faces that greet you in the morning, and the beautiful face that tells you goodnight. The thrill of seeing people move from death to life and the heartache of watching people walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Walking the tightrope between where you are and where you wish you could be. The urge and ache to be part of something huge and world changing woven into the tension of the minutia and mundane of the everyday. Just life as we remember it. The good, the bad, and the rest…just life. The highs and lows, the pitfalls and props of people who are created for eternity who for a time are bound to a fallen world and fallen bodies that will one day be built for glory.

That is why this time of the year brings this sensitivity to the fact that we should be somewhat discontent here. This isn’t home. Each time I go into the voting booth I am reminded that I am voting as a resident alien. Not politically, but spiritually. This world is not my home. I love my wife and children and the life that God has given me here, but there is a nagging part of my heart that will always be discontent here, because this is not home. This is indeed the land of my sojourn. It is the here and now, even though it is not the now and forever. So while I am wrapped in this flesh and subject to all the gripes and grace that comes with it, I’ll walk in the joy that comes in being a bit homesick, knowing that when this tent collapses and I jump off the ledge that is this world into eternity there is a loving God who will be there to catch me as faithful Father, just as I catch my three when they jump to me. Only He’s a much better catcher than I.