A big contributor to my malaise over the past several… okay 10…years is the feeling of not being settled. I never know when the husband is going to uproot us. It seems that wherever we move, he’s always looking to the next place.
Even when we visit a town, we drive around and look at neighborhoods, trying to picture ourselves moving there. That’s actually kind of fun and adventurous for a time. It distracts us from the problems of the day. But in the end, it just leaves me feeling homeless.
I actually have trees in pots because I’m afraid to plant them. And that, in itself, sums up my existence. I long to plant myself so that I can let my branches grow, but I feel constrained, root-bound, unsettled. So I become resentful and depressed. I don’t even care if my house is clean anymore, because I am afraid to get attached to it. I’m afraid to make commitments. I live life in the future instead of the now.
So imagine my “Come to Jesus” moment when I heard a sermon comparing the life of a Christian to that of a nomad. In fact, the preacher traced it all the way back to the garden. Think about it. There’s probably not a character in the Bible who wasn’t uprooted just as he was getting comfortable! Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, …. all of Israel… more than once!
I guess we all have that “Hey, it’s nice here in Babylon” mentality. There’s something about us that makes us want to put down roots. And there’s something about God that always says “Put your shoes on. We’re hitting the road.”
Because God is always moving.
Jesus was on a perpetual road trip, and his followers… then and now… don’t get to just sit at his feet and take notes. They don’t get to bolt down the furniture. Sometimes we forget that, because we go to a church building on Sundays where the furniture is always the same. And we call it our “church home.” But it’s not home! It’s just a refueling station!
God is always moving. And HE is our home. So, in reality, we are longing for something that is always with us.
I have a hard time with this. Maybe you do too. So let us pray that we might renew our minds to match God’s wanderlust, because life with God isn’t Babylon. It’s an adventure.
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