We Are Sojourners

Last night I celebrated my birthday with my wife and two of our kids at Sojourner Cafe (http://www.sojournercafe.com). The food there is tasty, nutritious, and affordable. I had the posole vegetable stew with cilantro pesto. It was a delightful meal and an enjoyable time.

Tomorrow my daughter will set out for Seattle to begin a new chapter of her life. She has friends and family there. She also has a place to live. I suspect that for a while - in spite of her connections in the area - she will feel like an outsider. Other than a four-month stint on a fall Europe study program, she has lived in Santa Barbara for the last thirteen years. I am glad that she will not be a "hostage to fortune" but rather a beloved daughter of God. I will continue to pray for her as she settles in, finds a job, learns to get around, and begins to feel at home. I trust that God will guide and protect her.

People who are new to an area can often feel somewhat alienated and vulnerable (even if also pleased and excited to have moved there). These sorts of emotions are typically amplified when language and culture pose barriers to finding satisfying employment and building close relationships. Our younger son has a good friend whose family moved to the United States from Uzbekistan three years ago. We recently had a picnic with them at which we chatted about their experience of immigrating to this country. Though they are happy to be here, they have also struggled, and the primary challenges have come about because of differences in speech and custom. Unfortunately, they are having to move from Santa Barbara to Calabasas. They hope their new community will be more affordable and that they will be able to find and keep better jobs. They also think that when they are closer to LA, they will be able to find more friends who speak Russian and understand Uzbeki traditions. They want to become Americans, but they also need to be with people who are like them as well. I pray that God will bless them as they transition to their new setting.

Toward the end of his reign, King David presided over a collection of gifts for the building of the temple (which his son Solomon would eventually construct). After the people had made their offering, David prayed to God. After praising him, David said,

"But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you. For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding (or "no hope")" (I Chronicles 29:14-15; English Standard Version).

Peter also addressed the Christians of Asia Minor to whom he wrote in his first epistle as "sojourners and exiles." But his characterization of their condition is much more positive:

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade" (1:3-4a).

There is a sense in which we are all sojourners (=people who reside in a place temporarily). Hopefully, remembering this can help us to be more empathetic with and helpful toward people like my daughter and our friends from Uzbekistan who experience their sojourning more consciously and acutely.

At Sojourner Cafe last night my wife ate a salad while I had my stew. These two types of meals represent two different models for a multicultural community. Whether we think of the ideal for such diverse groups as being assimilation (a "melting pot") or pluralism (a "tossed salad"), may we reach out to each other with love, understanding, and appreciation. I know my daughter will like Seattle folk to accept a California girl and our Uzbeki friends will enjoy kind initiatives from their neighbors.

Most importantly, I pray that all of us sojourners will find the "living hope" of which Peter speaks that will lead us to a permanent home where no one will be an outsider.