Born in Exile

The Holy One calls me to this morning. The celebration of Purim was yesterday and the historic event of God's rescue of His people as recorded in Esther.  Because there are so many symbollic similarities to our life today, the story of Purim beings me hope.  At the time of Purim, the Jews were living in the land of exile.

The Holy One draws me in.  "You were born in the land of exile".  To someone else's ears that might seem strange, but to me, the Holy One is putting one more piece into the puzzle of my understanding.  I so desire to learn of God's ways with His people.  I can know God's Will because it is written, but His ways with His people are so mysterious.

Isaiah quotes the Lord as declaring that His  thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts and His ways than our ways.  It is interesting how the Holy Spirit will drop a sentence into my mind and provoke me to meditate when He is teaching me Truth.  His statement to me this morning is loaded with meaning to glean.

For the Jewish people, Israel is their homeland and Jerusalem their Holy City.  Sometimes they even leave with the salutation "Next year in Jerusalem".  They have deep ties to the land of Israel, made even stronger over the generations through the Lord's discipline of sending them into exile.  They have a longing to be in Israel where they feel safe and "at home".

We cannot overlook the Lord's masterful plan in the exile.  While it is in part discipline, it has a Divinely orchestrated purpose: For God to reveal  Himself to the pagan nations into which His people were being sent.  While in exile, the Jews historically brought their God and their Faith with them.

During one such period of exile, the Lord sent a word  through His prophet.   Jeremiah 29:4, reads, "This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem. Build houses, settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters.  Find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage so they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there, do not decrease."

God intended that His people prosper in the land of exile and be a witness of Him to the world around them. Their witness and testimony about Him was intended to spread the good news among the pagans of the world. They were not set up to die in that place but rather prosper.

So what should this speak to me given, the Holy One's statement this morning?

I'm thinking that a child born in exile doesn't grasp that there is a homeland far superior to the place into which they were born.  However the training by the parent can paint a wonderful picture of the place called home of what the heart longs for and why.  Are we so caught up in the daily struggles and even pleasures of this place of exile that we don't teach our children to long for our homeland?

When I became a follower of Christ, I came to realized that Heaven is my Homeland and the place that I long for.  While I am in exile, I am to live out my life day to day sharing my faith and my God.  But I am not to forget my homeland.  I must not get too comfortable in the land of exile  lest I forget that this world is not my home.

Jesus has said, that  He will return for His people.  We are in this land of exile for just a little while longer. We are to increase and manifest our faith as we live in a place not our own.  But as we "occupy until He comes", may we never forget about our homeland. Most of the sadness we cannot understand that grips our heart is the deep longing for our true Home.

As I write this blog, tragedy has struck the earth realm in the death of a precious child.  But the mental picture painted of her last seconds of life here on earth was one of her running through a field of flowers into the arms of the One who was calling her home.  Precious Anna arrived in her homeland that, for the moment, we can only long to see.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?