iSN-GodSpeak

In the eyes of an eight-year-old, the most wonderful thing about Lake Michigan was grandpa's boat. Sailing was a hobby of his and I was a glad participant. A particularly rare treat was spending the night on the boat, gently being rocked to sleep by the bobbing waves and steady clanking of metal against mast. My grandpa tried to show me the Milky Way, directing my eyes by way of the North Star. He told us the meaning of the boat's name, a word that sounded funny at the time. "Nomad," he said, "is the word for a wanderer, a drifting, homeless traveler." Feeling like the darkened sky could swallow me up in seconds, under the stars, I felt the same.

I am comforted by the verses in Scripture that remind me that I am a wanderer, a stranger in a foreign land. "Hear my prayer, O LORD," pleads the psalmist, "listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were" (39:12). In the book of Hebrews, amongst the testimonies of those who have gone before us, we are told that besides having in common a life of faith, these men and women had in common the conviction that they were people living as aliens, journeying toward home. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth" (11:13).

In his book Reaching Out, author Henri Nouwen defines a stranger as someone who is "estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and from God." There are perhaps not many of us who cannot find ourselves within that definition in some way each day. At the sound of breaking news and in the silence of anguished prayer, there is a sense of alienation that wells up within us. Longing for promises in the distance, we wait estranged by the hope that all is not as it will be.

Along the road to Emmaus, Jesus walked with two of his disciples who did not recognize him. On their way, the disciples talked about the events that gripped them with confusion and sorrow: their crucified leader, their lost hope, and rumors of an empty tomb. The one who traveled with them talked about the Scriptures, explaining events and promises down the centuries from Moses to the prophets. When they arrived, they invited him in to have a meal with them, and as he broke the bread, their eyes were opened: The stranger who walked with them was the Lord.

On the journey towards home, there are always parts of ourselves that wander off with guilt or resentment, or get stuck somewhere on a tangent. But there is a great difference between wandering like a nomadic soul and walking as a stranger aware that going home is a lifelong journey walked with Christ. Often we are aware how long is the journey and how trying the conversations that must be had along the way. But if Jesus is the traveler walking with us, in his company we will be encouraged. In the form of a tired traveler, Christ came to show us the way; as a stranger in a foreign land, salvation came searching for all who find themselves estranged.