We are all sojourners to some degree. It’s inescapable, and it’s important to be aware that we are never really home while we walk this earth.
A (largely) shared language means I haven’t felt totally like an alien during the six and a half years I’ve lived in Texas; but there is always an underlying niggle that this isn’t my natural habitat. Whether it’s the strange looks I get when I use British words like niggle, or the hankerings for good chocolate, I’ve never felt totally settled. Now these feelings don’t mean that I must flee back to that “green and pleasant land” and leave America behind. I came here to marry my wife and we now have four children, a home and a church family. The Bible is full of travelling sojourners and they are each called to glorify God in whatever situation He has placed them in. I, like Abraham and Joseph, am a geographical sojourner but each of us are spiritual sojourners living in a place which is not meant to be our final destination. As C.S. Lewis puts it in Mere Christianity:
“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
As our family prepares to cross the world to live in a very different culture, we can find comfort in the fact that this unnatural state is totally normal. Jesus came down to sojourn among us and demonstrate how to do it well, and because of his death and resurrection we can be certain that we will reach the final destination with him when our journey is over. Friends, we are sojourners together and we are grateful for your partnership as you make this journey with us.