Strangers in the world

As many of you know, my family has accepted the call to become missionaries to Singapore this fall. As I write this post, we are in Mississippi going through our Pre-Field Orientation which is designed to help us prepare for our move. I really didn't know what to expect from this training and at times I have felt overwhelmed with all the information that has been given. But one concept has run through almost everything we have discussed - Christians have been called to be strangers in the world. This concept is found in Peter's first letter which begins as follows;

"Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout...who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood..." (1 Peter 1:1-2).

Up until this week, this verse was just another verse in God's Word. By this I mean that it was important but I had not yet allowed it to truly change me. All that has changed over the past few days as I realized that in a little over one month I will be moving my family to a different country. Before we step foot on Singapore soil, we have to get rid of most of our personal possessions whether it is being sold, put in storage, given away or thrown away. We must say goodbye to our family and friends and to the jobs we have come to love. Then we will board a plane and 30 hours later we will arrive in a country where we know nothing or no one. Everything we consider "normal" will be replaced with the wierd, the different and the unknown. And at that moment we will truly be "strangers in the world." We will no longer "fit in" or have our comfort items. Everything that we have come to rely on will be gone, except for us and God and yet I am completely OK with that. Why is that? Because I realize that moving to another country doesn't make me a stranger in the world, my relationship with Christ does. He expects me to be different and to have different values (obedience to His Word) than those who don't know Him. His desire is that people will see that I am different and want to know why. As such I should be just as much a stranger in my own land as I will be in my new land.

My home is in heaven and until I get there I want to be known as a "stranger in the world"