If you could choose someone to identify your life with who would it be? And why would you choose this person? What makes you like them? I too have people that I identify with and will explore one of them here.
I want to start a new blog series where people can tell part of their stories based on characters from the Bible. The goal is to put the Bible characters into real life and to understand ourselves a bit better. As Miguel De La Torre has said, ‘theology needs to be done from the margins, so that it is brought down to the level of the common, instead of being only done from the ivory tower, where it often does not affect the everyday lives of people.’ Thus we will attempt to listen to the voices of ordinary everyday people as they tell us their stories in this way.
A number of years ago if you had asked me whom I identified with I would have said Abraham. Abraham lived in tents and moved from place to place always looking for something better. He was looking for the place which God had promised him. It took many years with a lot of detours in his wanderings before he found that place and God started fulfilling his many promises.
When we first came to Dawson City in the Yukon, with two small girls, there was no housing for us to rent or buy so we ended up living in a tent for more than two months.
The rule was that no one could stay in a government campground for more than two weeks at a time. As a result, we ended up moving every two weeks until someone left for the winter and we were able to rent a house and start putting down roots.
However, when we read the story of Abraham it seems like he took a long time to put down roots. The first time he reached the land that God had promised to him he moved right on through and went down to Egypt. It is in Egypt where Abraham became a very wealthy person. The reason he moved to Egypt was because of a famine in Palestine. As COVID-19 is upsetting our economic now, a famine would upset the whole economic system at that time. Abraham being a man who was looking for something better left and went to the place where life seemed to be more secure. He was in fact much like an undocumented migrant who is traveling to the US looking to save and improve his life.
It is while living in Egypt as an undocumented migrant that he runs into trouble. What will he do for a livelihood there? If you follow the story in Geneses 12:10 and forward, you will find that Abraham tells his wife Sarah to say that she is his sister instead of his wife. This is only half true, because while she is his half-sister, in the story Sarah is always known as Abraham’s wife. There is a lot that we do not know about what happened, but Abraham became very rich when he was in Egypt, because of Sarah. Did he sell her to Pharaoh, as in pimping her out? It seems he must have. The place of safety for Abraham became a place of great danger for Sarah! When Pharaoh finds out that Sarah really is Abraham’s wife they get deported. This happens not only once but twice in the life of Abraham and Sarah, the other time is in Genesis 20. The huge mistakes that Abraham makes during times of difficulty did not mean the end of his relationship with God. We can forgive Abraham for his many sins because we see the whole picture. I think those times were times of learning for Abraham and by the end of his life he is willing to follow God even when God asks him to give up his son in Genesis 22. To be able to do this he did not let past failures stop him from moving forward.
In my own life there have been times of difficulty, and like Abraham those times have not meant the end of my walk with God. I want to touch briefly on a couple of times that were life changers for me. Like Abraham I have spent my time looking for a place. Not only a place to live but a place to belong and be a part of a community. I used to think my life was something like Abraham’s because we both looked for a unique place to live. Finding a unique place to live is great, but finding for a place to belong is more important, a place where we can explore life’s meaning and not be afraid of people who might see things differently. A place where we are treated as equal human beings and also a place where we treat others like we want to be treated. Sometimes this is a hard place to find and yet being part of God’s kingdom means that we should have a place of belonging.
My first difficulty was caused because of conflict with some who at one time I counted as my best friends. The conflict Abraham had with Pharaoh, caused Abraham to go back to the place that God called him to. For me it led to six years of higher education ending in the Master of Divinity program at Providence. Those years opened the door to viewing life as much bigger than I had previously understood. It cracked open a door to freedom that has more than paid for whatever cost arose from the conflict. I am deeply grateful for the doors which have opened to me.
The second time when conflict came it was almost a repeat of the first time, and again the result was it opened new doors for me to teach others and share life with them. Spending twelve winters in Mexico has allowed me to be in a very special place of belonging. A place where my heart is with my friends, a place where I can see, God is calling us to, a place to serve. It has not all been easy, learning Spanish is a huge struggle. Living in two places is not always easy either. And now we do not know what the future holds, because of COVID-19. Will we be able to go back to the people we have grown to love and with whom we feel like family? For me Mexico has become a place of belonging. When I think of Abraham in his later life when he took his son up the hill to offer him to God, I wonder what all went through his mind. What is clear after the years of difficulty and mistakes, he was sure of one thing; if God closed one door, he would open another. If there is a lesson that we can learn it is that when things go sideways, it does not mean that God is done with us. Usually it means if we can learn a lesson we will be able to move onto new things. With COVID-19 we cannot live in the past but need to be seeking new ways forward. As Carey Nieuwhof puts it “Asking the question “What does this make possible?” will shift your focus from what you can’t do to what you can do.” (https://careynieuwhof.com/5-transformative-questions-to-ask-before-you-reopen-your-church-or-after-youve-done-it/) Who knows which doors God will open for us as we seek belonging and place here in this life with God who knows and leads us like he did Abraham.
Choose Life 
I very much enjoyed your blog.Thank you for sharing. Yes we all need to to feel we belong. As I have lost m dear husband I have had often felt so alone and needed to find new places where I felt I belonged.. I am soooo very grateful for friends and family that have been there for me during this tough time.
Thank you. Losing someone leaves a big hole in life.