Sojourner

Learning Home Along the Way

...and Jacob became a sojourner in the land of Ham.

Lord, I love the house in which you dwell.

— Psalms 105 and 26

These two Psalms seem, at first, to be taking us in opposite directions.

Psalm 105 remembers the great wandering story of Israel. Abraham and his descendants move from place to place, Joseph is carried into Egypt, and eventually Jacob becomes “a sojourner in the land of Ham,” an ancient biblical name for Egypt. Psalm 26, meanwhile, gives us a very different image: “Lord, I love the house in which you dwell.”

One is about sojourning.

The other is about Home.

Perhaps they belong together more closely than it first appears.

For much of this year, I've been living something of a nomadic existence. I don't want to overdramatize that. I've actually gotten pretty good at it, and in many ways I've enjoyed it. I've had the unusual privilege of temporarily becoming part of nearly a dozen different neighborhoods, learning their streets and rhythms and becoming, for a little while, one of the people who wakes up there in the morning and comes home there at night.

It has made the biblical idea of the sojourner feel different to me.

A sojourner isn't necessarily lost. A sojourner can know exactly where he is while understanding that he isn't going to remain there forever. He can settle in, appreciate where he has landed, know the people around him and receive whatever that particular place has to offer.

Then, eventually, he moves on.

There may be something of that impulse in me naturally. Ever since my family moved to Michigan when I was a child, I've had a somewhat fluid sense of what “home” means. I've lived in many places that I remember warmly, and I have memories attached to each of them that nobody can take away from me. Yet there are really only two geographic places that have ever felt fully like HOME to me: Rochester, New York, and Shamrock, Texas.

But even those names don't quite explain it.

When I think about the places that have felt most profoundly like home, I think about people. My parents created one of those places. My maternal grandparents created another. They gave me the extraordinary gift of knowing that I could simply arrive. I didn't need an appointment or a compelling reason for being there. I could walk through the door and know that I was safe, welcomed and wanted.

Maybe that is why sojourners keep moving.

They aren't necessarily aimless drifters. Migrants and wanderers usually have some destination somewhere in their imagination, even when they can't quite name it. They are looking for the place where they can finally say, “Here. This is where I belong.”

In that sense, perhaps all of us are sojourners.

Israel certainly was. The biblical story is filled with people on the move: Abraham leaving his country, Jacob traveling into Egypt, Israel leaving Egypt again, exiles longing for Jerusalem, disciples being sent into the world. Even after arriving somewhere, God's people retain a certain restlessness because no earthly settlement quite completes the journey.

Christians understand that instinctively. We build houses and love our communities. We put down roots, plant gardens, raise families and become attached to places. Those are good things. Yet somewhere beneath all of that is the knowledge that none of these places can finally be HOME.

“Lord, I love the house in which you dwell.”

That's where Psalm 26 suddenly meets Psalm 105.

The sojourner has a destination.

And perhaps our temporary homes aren't distractions from that destination. Maybe they teach us how to recognize it.

Every person who has welcomed me teaches me something about welcome. Every household where I've felt safe teaches me something about safety. Every place where someone has made room for me gives me a small glimpse of what it means to belong. Even leaving those places teaches me something, because the sadness of leaving reminds me that I still long for something permanent.

There is another biblical image that I've always found compelling. John begins his Gospel by saying that the Word was “with God.” The Greek expression behind those words can also carry a sense of orientation toward God. I don't want to replace the familiar translation, but I love the image suggested by that little word: toward.

That is the direction of the whole story.

Toward God.

We wander, but we need not wander aimlessly. We listen, look and lift our eyes. We seek righteousness. We make peace. We search for one another. We keep moving toward the One whose house we already know we love.

And wonderfully, Scripture doesn't portray God as sitting passively at the destination waiting to see whether we can find our way there.

He moves toward us.

He searches for His sheep. He hears the suffering of His people and says, “I have come down to deliver them.” Finally He sends His Son into the world, and the great distance between God and His wandering people begins to close.

Perhaps that's why I can enjoy being a sojourner.

I don't have to demand that every temporary place become permanent. I can arrive gratefully, receive its hospitality, learn its people, discover something there that I didn't know before and, when the time comes, continue on. Each good place can be home for a while without having to become HOME.

And every once in a while, somebody opens a door and makes me feel so completely welcome that I recognize something.

Ah. This is what Home is supposed to feel like.

Then eventually the sojourner moves on again, carrying that little glimpse with him.

“Lord, I love the house in which you dwell.”

We're not there yet.

But we're headed Home.

And all along the way, Home keeps coming toward us.