The Calm Between Storms

I’m breathing a sigh of relief, thankful for the silence and solitude.  For two days now there have been no robocalls attempting to scare, manipulate, intimidate, or influence me to vote one way or another.  The TV is back to showing innocuous commercials about cars, shampoo, and beer --- no voice of doom warning me what might happen if one or the other candidate gets elected.  The difference in my mood is measureable.  Ahhhh.

I know the rancor of politics is not over but I’m appreciating this momentary lull, where winners and losers are for the most part being conciliatory.  The storms will return, of course, as surely as hurricane season brings its parade of tropical depressions; some, like Sandy, do build up to pack a wallop.  I know there looms on the horizon the “fiscal cliff,” and there will definitely be political conflict about what to do about it --- this is the way democracy works.  God bless America.

I am a citizen of the United States, and glad of it.  But I was born in Brazil to missionary parents and so I am considered a citizen of Brazil, also.  I have two passports.  I am proud of my Brazilian connection but I pledge allegiance to the Red, White and Blue rather than the Blue, Yellow and Green.  Still, I often feel like a stranger, no matter where I happen to be. 

One of the reasons for my sense of strangeness is the fact that our family moved around every four years or so.  I have never had a place that I call home, and so I often feel like a resident alien in whatever town I happen to be living in at the moment.  I have often wondered what it would be like to have been in one place for decades.  For me it is hard to imagine that kind of longevity anywhere.

But there is another reason for my rootlessness.  I belong to yet another country.  I have only seen it in my spiritual imagination as I have reflected on the Biblical witness of Jesus and the prophets.  The parables Jesus tells about the kingdom, and the pictures painted by the prophetic voices have taken hold of me and made me long for the country where God reigns, and I am restless until and unless I reside there.  Sometimes I have felt myself already there, when I have received kindness from strangers, seen enemies embrace, or witnessed forgiveness enfleshed.  I felt myself to be in that country this week as I shared coffee, donuts and deep conversation with African-American pastors as we empathized with each other in our common desire for justice and reconciliation. 

But most of the time I sense that there is a better country than this one and God has put a longing in my heart that cannot be satisfied with things as they are.

Still, I’m not just passing through.  I make my home where I am, and I look for God’s country in every face I see, and in everything I try to do.  And right now, in this quiet space and time, it feels more like home than usual.  And until the next storm comes I think I’ll just enjoy it.