Repentance
Among the more fascinating pages of American history are those that tell the stoies of the immigrants to these shores in the nineteenth century. Thousands upon thousands of people, whose lives in Europe had become mean and poor, persecuted and wretched, left.
They had gotten reports of a land where the environment was a challenge instead of an oppression. The stories continue to be told in many families, keeping alive the memory of the event that made an American out of what was a German or an Italian or a Scot.
My grandfather left Norway eighty years ago in the middle of a famine. His wife and ten children remained behind until he could return and get them. He came to Pittsburgh and worked in the steel mills for two years until he had enough money to go back and get his family. When he returned with them he didn't stay in Pittsburgh although it had served his purposes well enough the first time, but he traveled to Montana, plunging into new land, looking for a better place.
In all these immigrant stories there are mixed parts of escape and adventure; the escape from an unpleasant situational the adventure of a far better way of life, free for new things, open for growth and creativity. Every Christian has some variation on this immigrant plot to tell.
"Woe is me, that I sojourn in Meshech, that I dwell among the tents of Kedar! Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace." But we don't have to live there any longer. Repentance, the first word in Christian immigration, set us on the way to traveling in the light. It is a rejection that is also an acceptance, a leaving that develops into an arriving, a no to the world is a yes to God.
I'm doomed to live in Meshech,
cursed with a home in Kedar,
My whole life lived camping
among quarreling neighbors.
PSALM 120:5-6
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