Dear reader: If your time is limited, skip the post and read the quote at the end...that’s all I really wanted to share, the rest is just my ramblings...
The new year came in what felt like a whirlwind of events and emotions. I made some last minute resolutions in order to keep up with social demands and for conversation sake, but without putting much thought and intention into them. A modest New Year’s Eve celebration was shared with my closest friend, Anna, her precious baby boy, and another friend. Just before midnight, she went to her husband’s concert to kiss her beloved at the strike of 12. I stayed with Charlie and had the great honor of placing a kiss on his sweet cheek to welcome in his very first new year. It was low-key, but memorable.
The first day of 2012, I was on the road again, continuing my journey to Texas. Less than 48 hours after my arrival, I was sedated for the removal of 4 wisdom teeth. The hours and days immediately following are a blur of indistinct memories. As I regained endurance and consciousness I remember feeling like I had missed the coming of the new year. That sense of a “fresh start” which frequently accompanies the first week in January was absent. My rushed resolutions seemed careless and generalized. A need for a fresh start to my new year was recognized...but fresh starts are hard to come by when I’m in transition. Allow me a moment to tell you what being in transition is like for me. In previous blog posts I have referenced both appreciation and moderation of having a routine. When I am in transition (specifically referring to the weeks or months in between my jobs and my trips, during which I have no consistent schedule or agenda), I don’t have a routine and I get a little lost and lazy. To put it plainly, without a schedule or deadlines I am not very good and managing my time and I have little motivation to do so. With this being the case at the start of 2012, I could not seem to get my mind clear enough to enter the new year with that fresh sense of renewal and preparedness...so I decided to put off new years until February 1st. (It’s okay, you can laugh). This has released me of the pressure I was putting on myself to be ready for the new year. With that pressure removed, I was able to enjoy my still whirlwind first weeks of January and face other unanticipated decisions and events that were thrown at me. Now, the last week in January, I am a little tired from what was supposed to be my “time of rest” and I am eager to start my next job and eager to establish a routine, if only for 8 weeks. I am returning to Virginia, this time to the Eastern Shore, for a 2 month contract job starting this week. I feel much more prepared and excited for my “new year”, and I have had some time to put thought into establishing a few more meaningful personal resolutions.
As I am daily reminded of the homelessness I feel on this earth, the passage in Hebrews 11:13-16 comes to mind. The great “heroes of faith” were described as “admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth” and “longing for a better country—a heavenly one.” It is hard being a full-time traveler. It is a challenge to stay focused, motivated and on task with the ever-changing and sometimes non-existent routine. Whether you are in one place or travel about, we are all travelers on a journey through life on earth. As followers of Christ, we are not called to an easy, comfortably-routined life, we are called to be travelers, foreigners, living in the world, but keeping ourselves from the world. At the Medical Missions Seminar in Ft. Worth last weekend, John Carr shared an excerpt from the 2nd century Letter to Diognetus regarding Christians. This is a long quote, but it is worth taking the time to read and consider the implications. Are we carrying on this identity that the early Christians portrayed? Do we live like foreigners on earth?
Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines. Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life. They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers. They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They share a common table, but not a common bed. They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything. They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead. They are assailed by the Jews as barbarians; they are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to give any reason for their hatred.
To sum it all up in one word, what the soul is in the body, that is what Christians are in the world. The soul is dispersed through all the parts of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world. The soul lives in the body, yet is not of the body; Christians live in the world, yet are not of the world.
Letter to Diognetus, adapted translation by Paul F. Pavao, Christian History for Everyman. Italics mine.
