Scripture Reflections

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
    whose trust is the Lord.
He is like a tree planted by water,
    that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
    for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
    for it does not cease to bear fruit.”            
Jeremiah 17:7-8
 
The prophet Jeremiah, speaking to the Israelites as they were being exiled from their homeland, here quotes and expands on Psalm 1, the psalm we sang and read together this past Sunday. Like Psalm 1, this prophecy asks of us: where, and to whom, do you send out your roots?
 
In the next month our family anticipates moving into a house and more fully making a home for ourselves here in Kazakhstan—and then for a few months, from June to November, we will be back in the US, in this place which is also our home. Where do we belong? As we think through this and try to arm ourselves for the struggle we are in and know is coming, especially for our boys, I’ve been reading quite a bit on Third Culture Kids (TCKs). This is a description of kids like ours, who have a home as expatriates in some country other than their passport country, where they also have a home. Many authors discuss the difficulty TCKs have in answering the question, “Where are you from?” and the longing they experience to know where they belong. But the proposed solutions of some of this literature come up empty: find belonging in yourself; find belonging in your family; find belonging in the TCK, international, or expatriate community. 
 
We all long for belonging whether or not we even have a passport, but to try to root ourselves in ourselves or in others is to make ourselves into tumbleweed. Jeremiah’s prophecy quoted above begins with (Jer. 17:5-6):
 
“Thus says the Lord:
‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man
    and makes flesh his strength,
    whose heart turns away from the Lord.
6 He is like a shrub in the desert,
    and shall not see any good come.
He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,
    in an uninhabited salt land.’”
 
To trust, to send out our roots to humans—to ourselves or to those around us, even those who have or seem to have what we’re looking for—is fatal. We must trust, we must send out our roots only to our Father, who alone is the source of life. The apostle Paul in his letter to the church at Ephesus gives us a picture of ourselves as tumbleweed, desperately trying to root ourselves in ourselves or in others who are flesh like us (Ephesians 4:14): “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” But he also gives us a picture of who we are and can be as we learn to trust God, as we send out our roots to our Father (Eph 4:15-16): “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,  from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”
 
Ultimately, what we want our sons to say of themselves as they answer “Where are you from?” and the deeper question behind it, “Who are you?” is this: “I am a baptized man, bought with the blood of Christ, made a member of his (worldwide and centuries deep) Church, looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” Where do we belong? We want to know because we want to be able to abide, to come and stay, to rest and be fed, to be known and loved. Listen as Jesus prays for you and me (and for all our children!) in John 17:20-26—and even now as he stands before the Father interceding for us:
 
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
 
 Hannah