Pilgrim

July 18, 2019

Sitting with Linda on our patio watching the fireflies and a movie on the iPad settles me. With her, in this place, I am content. The past four days I’ve spent with my mother near Rochester so my brother could have a few days’ vacation. Linda was with me for the first two days, but came home early due to prior commitments, so we’ve only been apart for one day. After 49 years, we just seem to belong together. I regularly travel to Cuba, and we have different interests we both feel free to pursue; we’re not joined at the hip, but we are at the heart.

On the way home today, I got to thinking about Abraham and his progeny who lived in tents “look[ing] for the city whose builder and maker was God” (Heb. 11:10), confessing “that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” (Heb. 11:13). I’ve been communicating with my Christian brothers and sisters in Mongolia. They literally live in tents, “gers” made of felt that can be dissembled in about an hour, moving from place to place across the sparse Mongolian landscape. How different my life is. I am not wealthy by our country’s standards, but I’ve lived long enough in one place to accumulate quite a lot of stuff that would take me a lot of work and quite awhile to move. I hardly travel light in this world. If God were to tell me as he did Abraham, to pull up stakes and move to a foreign land, it would take me awhile to obey. 

The real question boils down to “Who owns what?” Am I the owner, or does the stuff own me? Is my grip so great that God would have to pry my fingers away from the things I hold onto, or do I grasp things with open hands that allow God full access not only to my heart, but also to my holdings? I am thankful tonight to have had time while driving to ponder Scriptures that challenge me and call me to a deeper devotion and a looser connection to the things of this world.