Sojourners

My “task reminder” on my Smart Phone reminds me at 9:00 a.m. that I have an appointment to read Scripture. Most days, by the time it pops up on my screen, I’ve already read that day’s Scripture. Right now I am reading Deuteronomy, and will soon finish reading the Torah – something I try to do at least once every year.

One of the things I’ve learned over many years of disciplined Bible reading is that if you don’t want your approach to life challenged, don’t read the Bible. I would be quick to add that is true for the Old Testament as well as the New – while recognizing the distinction between the two covenants. But the character of God is embedded all over the Hebrew scripture, and I’m pretty sure the character of God is unchanging!

Very early this morning, before the sun was even up, I did my reading for today. (If it helps, “today” is Wednesday, 26 July 2017.) I have also discovered that the earlier I do my Bible reading, the more impact it tends to have on my behavior! 

Sometimes we are far too quick to assume that love and law are mutually exclusive of each other. In that spirit it is easy to develop an approach to life where we define love and that definition seldom if ever challenges our preferences. If that is true of you, reading Deuteronomy is going to be discomforting.

In chapters ten and eleven, Moses is reminding Israel that the blessing of being the chosen people of God to whom the Law was given carries with it huge responsibilities.   None of his words in these chapters seem more relevant to me than what he says in 10:18, 19: “He (God) executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (ESV)

What stuns me about those words is that they were said to Israel at a time in the history of God’s relationship with humankind that the idea of separation was pretty important. The moral code of the law combined with an ethic focused on loving God and loving neighbor simply makes it impossible for even Israel, the chosen of God, to not care about the sojourners. Their history reminds them that too were sojourners.

We live in a world of sojourners. Some have described the Syrian refugee crisis as the most serious refugee crisis since World War II. By the way, some of you reading this might remember that in the earliest days of the EES ministry in Tuebingen, Earl and OttieMearl Stuckenbruck took care of lots of sojourners in the aftermath of  WWII coming to an end in Germany.

Earlier this week, the news was filled with stories about sojourners left in a trailer in San Antonio, Texas where outdoor temperatures were above 100. When they were finally discovered, ten were dead, twenty taken to hospitals in critical condition, and no one knows for sure how many simply ran away from the tragedy. 

Several years ago two of the Lost Boys of the Sudan became students at Point University. Both graduated and are serving God in significant ways today. Talk about sojourners!

The world if filled with sojourners. 

Moses gives some great advice to Israel on behalf of God. To summarize in my own words, it might sound something like “Don’t use the Law as an excuse for not living in the character of God.” 

In a world filled with sojourners and where some of the loudest anti-sojourner voices seem to come from people who call themselves followers of Jesus, we might do well to read Deuteronomy!