I'm doomed to live in Meshech, cursed with a home in Kedar, my whole life lived camping among quarreling neighbors. I'm all for peace, but the minute I tell them so, they go to war!
(Verses 5-7)
"But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Jeremiah 29
"You're going to move to the land of fruits and nuts?" a rather red-necked neighbor asked when I told him Bill had been transferred from Texas to California again. "That's the most liberal state on the planet!" he said as he laughed raucously. Like we'd done lost our minds! We knew California. Had lived here briefly before. For a Christian, it might be a little like living in Meschech. The people there were referred to as the Moschoi. They'd settled in an area on the southeast edge of the Black Sea, which today is in northern Turkey. A long way from Jerusalem! The people of Kedar lived in the Arabian desert. The pining of the psalmist is for home where he knows people, they are his near or distant kin, and they have the same morals--the same God. He longs for the peace that common worship and a common God bring. Yet when he tries to bring accord in his alien place, they are ready to fight his ideas and morals. Sounding familiar?
I am feeling more and more uncomfortable in my world here by the sea, but not because I live in California. The entire world is falling apart, turned upside down, where wrong is right and right is persecuted. There is no longer a moral standard that guides us globally. We are making it up as we go along. Picketers carry placards from the right at funerals and on the left at pro-life rallies. It is harder and harder for me to share my opinions with my liberal friends because they feel a need to either shut me down or shut me off. Right and left, Christian, Jew or Muslim, man or woman...we just can't seem to make peace any more. Our beliefs, as Christians, are derided and called everything from homophobic to neurotic, with no room for us to quantify or qualify. The Lord predicted our predicament in Jeremiah 6: "Everyone's after the dishonest dollar, little people and big people alike. Prophets and priests and everyone in between twist words and doctor truth. My people are broken--shattered!--and they put on band-aids, saying, 'It's not so bad. You'll be just fine.' But things aren't just fine. Do you suppose they are embarrassed over this outrage? No, they have no shame. They don't even know how to blush. There's no hope for them. They've hit bottom and there's no getting up. As far as I'm concerned, they're finished." God has spoken.
So what do we do in our alien lives by the sea or in the desert where we are so out of place and becoming more and more uncomfortable? Pray for peace. Pray for the cities in which we live and more broadly for the country in which we live. If those around us become darker and darker, we must become lighter and brighter. We are called to be salt and light, not to be politically vigorous in our efforts to change human hearts. There are some wrongs that have been turned, by our government and its people, into right that make no logical sense. Yet the hearts of men and women want what they want. Politics doesn't have the power to take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. Only our God can do that. Fighting about--arguing Him--isn't going to bring the peace for which we long on foreign shores. Heart must call to heart. Spirit to spirit. That is what it means to follow Jesus.
What it doesn't mean is that we lie down and roll over, compromising what we know to be true. But it does mean that once we manifest our faith in Christ, we live it. In the uncomfortable world away from home. And we pray for our city, state and country because their welfare directly affects ours...and those who come after us.
Jesus said we are each like a city set up on a hill. You will see that city from a distance. It can't be hidden because it is above the rest of the landscape (Matthew 5). I like that thought today. I am a city governed by a King Whose rule is from heaven, set apart and higher than that of the ruler of this world (John 12). It's not a pride thing--like I'm better than anyone who lives down the hill. Quite the opposite, I'm a city set up high so that others can come up there with me! I'm a beacon, not as an idol. I am a light in darkness (Matthew 5) not so I gleam more profusely than those whose wick is gone, but so people can see the difference in walking blind and moving in the light. This is what I am to be about in a foreign environment. Bringing peace not by my political or intellectual brilliance, but by offering the Light of the World to those who grope for meaning and real peace.
(Verses 5-7)
"But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Jeremiah 29
"You're going to move to the land of fruits and nuts?" a rather red-necked neighbor asked when I told him Bill had been transferred from Texas to California again. "That's the most liberal state on the planet!" he said as he laughed raucously. Like we'd done lost our minds! We knew California. Had lived here briefly before. For a Christian, it might be a little like living in Meschech. The people there were referred to as the Moschoi. They'd settled in an area on the southeast edge of the Black Sea, which today is in northern Turkey. A long way from Jerusalem! The people of Kedar lived in the Arabian desert. The pining of the psalmist is for home where he knows people, they are his near or distant kin, and they have the same morals--the same God. He longs for the peace that common worship and a common God bring. Yet when he tries to bring accord in his alien place, they are ready to fight his ideas and morals. Sounding familiar?
I am feeling more and more uncomfortable in my world here by the sea, but not because I live in California. The entire world is falling apart, turned upside down, where wrong is right and right is persecuted. There is no longer a moral standard that guides us globally. We are making it up as we go along. Picketers carry placards from the right at funerals and on the left at pro-life rallies. It is harder and harder for me to share my opinions with my liberal friends because they feel a need to either shut me down or shut me off. Right and left, Christian, Jew or Muslim, man or woman...we just can't seem to make peace any more. Our beliefs, as Christians, are derided and called everything from homophobic to neurotic, with no room for us to quantify or qualify. The Lord predicted our predicament in Jeremiah 6: "Everyone's after the dishonest dollar, little people and big people alike. Prophets and priests and everyone in between twist words and doctor truth. My people are broken--shattered!--and they put on band-aids, saying, 'It's not so bad. You'll be just fine.' But things aren't just fine. Do you suppose they are embarrassed over this outrage? No, they have no shame. They don't even know how to blush. There's no hope for them. They've hit bottom and there's no getting up. As far as I'm concerned, they're finished." God has spoken.
So what do we do in our alien lives by the sea or in the desert where we are so out of place and becoming more and more uncomfortable? Pray for peace. Pray for the cities in which we live and more broadly for the country in which we live. If those around us become darker and darker, we must become lighter and brighter. We are called to be salt and light, not to be politically vigorous in our efforts to change human hearts. There are some wrongs that have been turned, by our government and its people, into right that make no logical sense. Yet the hearts of men and women want what they want. Politics doesn't have the power to take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. Only our God can do that. Fighting about--arguing Him--isn't going to bring the peace for which we long on foreign shores. Heart must call to heart. Spirit to spirit. That is what it means to follow Jesus.
What it doesn't mean is that we lie down and roll over, compromising what we know to be true. But it does mean that once we manifest our faith in Christ, we live it. In the uncomfortable world away from home. And we pray for our city, state and country because their welfare directly affects ours...and those who come after us.
Jesus said we are each like a city set up on a hill. You will see that city from a distance. It can't be hidden because it is above the rest of the landscape (Matthew 5). I like that thought today. I am a city governed by a King Whose rule is from heaven, set apart and higher than that of the ruler of this world (John 12). It's not a pride thing--like I'm better than anyone who lives down the hill. Quite the opposite, I'm a city set up high so that others can come up there with me! I'm a beacon, not as an idol. I am a light in darkness (Matthew 5) not so I gleam more profusely than those whose wick is gone, but so people can see the difference in walking blind and moving in the light. This is what I am to be about in a foreign environment. Bringing peace not by my political or intellectual brilliance, but by offering the Light of the World to those who grope for meaning and real peace.
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