Migrations - the sequel

Carrying on the theme of migration, I myself am soon to migrate. I am delighted to report that in mid-November I take up the pastorate of Durrington Free Church, in the middle of Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire.

The move south is a few weeks away yet. My life, though, is gradually being transferred to storage bins and boxes. It is a familiar routine. On average, in recent times, I have moved once every four years.

Perhaps I’m something of a nomad. And perhaps that’s the way God wants it, but I’ve been resistant.

You see, I have a couple of dreams. One is definitely within God’s will. The other I’m more doubtful about.

The doubtful dream is one about eventually being settled. On retirement you find a pleasant home where you can put down roots in a healthful area that you already know reasonably well.

The facilities are good and there are friendly people who know you and will welcome you. Within easy reach are to be found a sound gospel church and community groups to join. You have a garden you can get established and enough space in the house to accommodate an array of exciting electronic gadgets. The neighbourhood is quiet; country lanes are not far away. The noise pollution of barking, yelping pet dogs is mercifully a thing of the past. A sufficient, guaranteed pension income allows you to explore new possibilities.

Sounds good at first. It fails to take account of a number of things.

First, I have yet to master this retirement business. When faced with enforced leisure I don’t function well.

Second, in God’s purposes there is no real retirement. The Promised Land was supposed to be journey’s end for the Israelites of old. Yet they were expected to leave their houses once a year and build shelters for themselves out in the open - it was called the Feast of Tabernacles - to remind them of the Exodus from Egypt. This festival is no longer binding on Christians, but they are told in Hebrews 13:14

For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come (NIV).

This should be a warning. A long, settled earthly retirement is not wrong for the Christian, but it is not an automatic entitlement either.

The other dream is more likely to be within God’s will. It is about being pastor of a church where I can serve God productively among people who understand what that service means.

“Surely,” you say to yourself, “that would describe any church.” Yet it is astonishing how many put road blocks in front of a pastor that are totally uncalled for. In situations like that a pastor will feel that he is a guest at the table, not a member of the family. Meaningful service becomes impossible and survival or departure is the name of the game.

As the next stage of my life’s journey takes me to Wiltshire, I have high hopes that the experience will be positive both for the new pastor and for the church.

It will be a joy to find the elusive pastorate which works out. Yet that joy, like all earthly joys, is a guide and a pointer rather than an end in itself. For those who remain faithful unto death, through all the ups and downs, there is a heavenly home yet to be revealed.

Years ago, God spoke to me dramatically through Psalm 138:8 -

The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me.

The Holy Spirit brings this up to date for the Christian in another verse, Philippians 1:6 -

… he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Make that Day your goal, and both disappointments and joys fall into their God-given place.

Migrations

Then you shall declare before the LORD your God: "My father was a wandering Aramaean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. But the Egyptians ill-treated us and made us suffer, putting us to hard labour. Then we cried out to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression. So the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders. He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And now I bring the first fruits of the soil that you, O LORD, have given me." Deuteronomy 26:5-10 NIV

Migration is a phenomenon that applies not only to the human race but also to much of nature. We wonder at the extraordinary movements of birds, summer by summer, making their way to their northern feeding grounds and then returning southwards for the winter.

Among humans there were vast migrations even before written history began. As a student of languages, I used to learn about the massive people movements that must have taken place in time out of mind. Early populations would have moved en masse from central Asia and fanned out right through Europe, taking their languages with them.

Nowadays the issue of migration is very much a talking point. Many thousands are desperate to get from their homelands in Africa and Asia and make their way to the west. In an effort to make sense of it all, we try to classify them as either economic migrants or political refugees. Economic migrants are mostly seen as wishing to take advantage of the affluence of the developed world, unless they can contribute skills that the receiving country particularly needs. Political migrants may find a more sympathetic reception. These are people who go in the fear of their lives because of conditions in their home countries. In practice it is often not possible to determine which motive is uppermost in the mind of a particular migrant.

There is much about migration in the Bible. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt into the Promised Land is burned into the consciousness of the Jewish people and indeed Christians to this very day. The model of Christians as people on a journey looms large in the book of Hebrews. In Hebrews 12:13-14 we read that the Lord Jesus was hounded to death as an outsider and His followers too are outsiders in this world:

“… Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” (ESV)

Because true citizens of God’s Kingdom are looking for another and better country, they are never prepared to compromise with the worldly conditions and expectations that they find around them. We may have all the trappings of affluence. Yet we cannot simply rest content with the status we have now. The Lord Jesus made these pointed remarks:

And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward (Matthew 6:16)

In other words, in the admiration people give them they have already had all the reward they are going to get.

In what I call the Great Reversal, Jesus repeatedly states how the downtrodden will receive blessing in the next life. Remember, too, that He said about Himself that He had nowhere to lay His head (Matthew 8:20).

None of this means that we can in any way romanticise the aching issues of migration, the human dramas that are going on around us. But it does remind us that the human race is not programmed to be stuck in a groove. We are to embrace change – first and foremost the change of repentance: the 180° turnaround from sin to righteousness, from rejecting Christ to accepting Him. Then we go on to move deliberately to the pattern of service that God has for us, which may take us well away from the familiar and comfortable.