“See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them” (Deuteronomy 6:8).

Orphans. Displacement. Homeless. Migration. Deportation. Resettlement. Instability. War. Starvation. Refugees. Exodus. Exile. Foreigner. Outcast. Discrimination.

My Bible reading and study in recent weeks has focused on the Exodus. The last five secular novels I read have had, just by chance, some interesting similarities. The last two novels I read were coincidentally based on displaced people. One was about some of the surviving Jews from Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic who resettled in what would become the new state of Israel, reclaiming land from the Arabs who had occupied Palestine for hundreds of years, all of whom faced war, starvation, and resettlement as they struggled through the formation of this new country. The other was about the half million or so people from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas who traveled west to California seeking work after their land had been devastated by the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression, only to subsist in tent camps facing discrimination while migrating up and down the state seeking work picking crops. And recently, I read three novels in a row that coincidentally were each centered around the key figure being an orphan.

Orphans. Displacement. Homeless. Migration. Deportation. Resettlement. Instability. War. Starvation. Refugees. Exodus. Exile. Foreigner. Outcast. Discrimination.

There are so many specific events in history about resettlement; some recorded in the Bible. Abraham was called by God to leave his home and resettle in Canaan, then his descendants had to move to Egypt to survive the famine, then those descendants escaped slavery in Egypt under Moses’ leadership to resettle in Canaan, displacing the Canaanites who had since settled there during the last 400 years. “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant” (Joshua 24:13). And we know that many years later, the Israelites were defeated in battle by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and many were deported to foreign lands; seventy years later they were able to return to the Promised Land to rebuild their temple and retake their land. So much instability, movement; so many casualties. Even Mary and Joseph had to take the baby Jesus to Egypt for a time to escape persecution. Globally, there have been major displacements on each inhabited continent. Even in our great country of America, Europeans displaced the Native Americans as the United States was formed, Africans were forcibly brought to America as enslaved people, and we continue to be a haven of sorts for refugees and those seeking political asylum from a variety of countries.

Now, my intention is not to have a political discussion about immigration, slavery, etc. What I am trying to say is that historically and globally, there has been at least as much instability as there have been families living out their lives in a stable environment. As I pondered my Bible study and the historically based stories in these novels, I thought about so many of you who have grown up in instability; for many of you the Mission has become your home.

What we call home has many different connotations. “Home is where the heart is.” “Home is where I hang my hat.” “Home is where my family is.” “Home is where I can let down my hair.” “Home is…. (each of you would probably finish the sentence a different way).

Biblically speaking, at one time, home a/k/a The Promised Land was a specified location. It was centered around the Ark of the Covenant because that is where the priests went to meet God.

While we as Americans are mostly extremely blessed by comfortable living conditions, and we should be thankful for these blessings, we should realize that where we physically live now or where we aspire to live is not our forever home. It is not the “be-all and “end-all.” We are not now living in the Promised Land. Now that “the day” has arrived with the first coming of Christ, we are living under the New Covenant, God dwells in our hearts, so our spiritual home is less about a location and more about a state of mind defined by our relationship with God.  

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Jeremiah 31:31-33

We never know what the future holds for us as to our earthly home; but praise God we know who holds our future. Let us always look to our Heavenly Father for our ultimate security.

So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17-19)

In Christ,

Judy