Our Strange New Home
We weren't from around here. We could choose either to make this place ours, or never fully arrive.
David Goebel
July 1, 2006
Snow is falling hard outside my window. It's supposed to; it's winter in Idaho. Shoveling it, driving in it, playing in it all go with the territory here. This is what winter is supposed to look like. Unless, of course, you're from Florida.
Guess where I'm from.
I am a stranger in a strange land. Marrying a Montanan, I found myself drawn away from my native tropical homeland to the rugged beauty and wonder of the Rocky Mountain Northwest. Its wide vistas and clear streams cascading through mountains seduced me to leave behind all that I knew of palm trees, beaches, and hurricane season.
I have chosen this life. And I've been here more than 11 years, serving two churches and now planting another, with our elders' support, at the other end of the valley that's exploding with growth. Still, sometimes I wonder, What am I doing here?
Maybe you do, too. As Eugene Peterson describes it in Run with the Horses, "The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don't want to be. We are separated from home. We are not permitted to reside in the place where we comprehend and appreciate our surroundings. … But this very strangeness can open up new reality to us."
So, how can we learn to love the place where God has called us, even when that place is far from home? Jeremiah's friends wondered the same thing: "How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?"
When the people of Judah went into Babylonian exile, God spoke through Jeremiah. He told the people to build homes there and settle. "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile … 'Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and ...
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