Pilgrims and Sojourners
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.
The year was 1976; Jimmy Carter would be elected President of the United States of America. Current fashion in the United States included peasant shirts with billowing sleeves, maxi skirts, and bell bottom jeans. American disco music and dance was on the rise, and cabbage patch babies had just been discovered. This was the world I understood, the culture I was familiar with, and the only worldly cultural experience I knew.
I would turn fifteen that year, and prior to my birthday, in the summer of 1976, my family would travel to India to settle there for almost a year. It would be a year that has continued to impact my life daily since, for it taught me that my culture should never define me. I learned that my experiences and culture were shared by very few people, and totally unimportant and insignificant to most souls in our world. I was forced to examine my heart to define who I was when all my earthly references to identity were no longer available for me.
We tend to sojourn in “bubbles”; not realizing that our understanding and experiences that yearn to define us are shared by only a few in this world, and that our focuses and interests are unimportant and even unrecognizable to most. When we are forced to go beyond the protection of our known experience, then we must face the reality that we are very small, that the treasures we cherish are not impressive, and that the definition of who we are is not about where we live or what language we speak. The universities we attend are not even known by most, the clothes we wear are not “in fashion” around the world, the language we speak is unintelligible to so many - even our outward beauty is not measured equally throughout the world.
We are most uncomfortable when we are challenged to know ourselves in a way where the world can’t define us. When asked “tell me about yourself,” we are likely to answer with where we were born, who our family is, where we currently live, how old we are, where we were educated, what our earthly jobs are, and even what we are interested in. While we fully understand that we are sojourners, it is easy to forget what that really means - as we focus only on a home and land we live in for our number of days on earth - and not on a home and land that we are traveling to.
And so, we begin to understand what a testimony of faith God’s command was for Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah both believed that above all they belonged to God. They were only the very beginning of an earthly “nation” that God would identify as His own, but though a true understanding was not complete in them, a “nation” was not necessary for them to understand their ultimate allegiance to God. Make no mistake about it, they were comfortable in Ur and Haran. They had acquired a great many riches and household members by the time they left Haran. Canaan was an unfamiliar and untraveled place for the two of them. They did not identify with the people, and they were not accustomed to the way of life in the new land. But, they went, knowing who they were despite where they were. They belonged to the God who created them. They heard Him, they listened to Him, they obeyed Him, and they set their sights on His promises whether they made sense to them or not. And they never again “belonged” in a land, they never again owned land, felt permanent, understood the culture surrounding them, or identified wholly with the people around them. They continued to worship the God of Heaven, they continued to sacrifice and pray in a new land, they returned to their homeland to find wives for their sons, they moved as God directed, and they constantly remembered that they trusted in God for protection, provision, and the hope of the promise.
India was a drastically different culture for me, but God never changed. Among the Hindu temples and holy men, I knew the God of Heaven was with me and that He was watching our family as we walked and moved in our sojourn. There were no earthly cultural references in Allahabad that could help define me; I was foreign in every way. I did not look, act, sound, think, or speak as any around me. Isn’t that really the very principal of our walks in Christ on earth? Perhaps my travels on earth have alerted me to this very basic principle of God’s people, but you do not need to travel to observe this very thing. Aren’t we to realize that we must see God and His promises as the foundation of our own definition of ourselves? Do we look, act, sound, think, or speak as anyone in the world? Peter discusses what pilgrims and sojourners look like to the world around them in 1 Peter 2: 11-12.
Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Our culture, our dress, our speech, our heart, our service, our worship, our entire character is shaped by God not the world. We can live in any place, in any circumstances, in any year, and with any experiences and be unchanged in our journey. That is what Abraham and Sarah understood, it is what Joseph knew, and it is what Esther experienced.
The danger is for us not to know, and Satan is powerful and fully aware of our need to define ourselves. If our identity is earthly, if we ever feel we fit into our environment, if we define ourselves by any earthly place or institution, if our value comes from our profession or our family, if our confidence comes from a talent or opportunity, then we are in danger of not understanding our pilgrimage. Abraham led his family with faith, not defined by a place or culture, he obeyed the God of the promise. He was no more a pilgrim in Canaan than he had been in Ur or Haran; his focus and character was not defined by those places but by God. In a sense, I was not more different in India than I am today in Florida. We are all foreigners and sojourners until we reach our home; we do not fit in, nor do we think, act, or live like those in the land of our pilgrimage. May we be willing, as Abraham and Sarah, to be true travelers in a land that we do not understand or know, relying on the promises of the One who we believe.