EXILE AND HOME

Exile and Home

    When reading Jeremiah 29, found myself confronted by God in a way i did not expect. Let me cut to the chase.  Ever since we moved to North Carolina, with the intention that we would never return to our home state of Kentucky, I have been in a crappy mindset. It has nothing to do with North Carolina.  It is a lovely state and the best part, we are just two doors down from our son Adam and his family. Then what is my problem? Simply, I have never felt that it was home.  And , Jeremiah helped me to describe it with one word:  exile.  I feel like I am exile.  Its not the same as the Jewish exile into Babylon, which was a forced exile in captivity.  Becky and I made this choice.  It was not forced.  We love being near to Adam and his family and closer to our daughter.  In fact, she and her family are coming within 30 minutes of here later this year. But, it is not home, and we feel like we are in exile, even if it is self imposed.   

Maybe you have felt that way with regards to your location, or your work, or your circumstances…. in exile.  Sometimes we feel in exile even around people we know and like but they just don’t seem to understand us, or we feel that we are all alone even in the midst of a crowd of friends….in exile.

I have felt in exile often when, as a pastor, we’d move to new appointments, though most (not all) were wonderful. But it wasn’t home.  I felt in exile when the denomination I grew up in and was ordained after God’s call upon my life, when it moved away from God’s Word its theological and doctrinal foundation. And moving into a townhouse of less than 1700 sq. feet from a beautiful farm and a historic 4,000 sq. foot  farmhouse.  Yes, I feel like I’m in exile, separated from my home. 

And then Jeremiah writes this letter to me and in it states this:

29:4 This is what the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, says to all the exiles I deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men in marriage so that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there; do not decrease. 7 Seek the welfare of the city I have deported you to. Pray to the Lord on its behalf, for when it has prosperity, you will prosper.” 

My paraphrase from 29:4-7 QSVB: "Yes, you are away from the place you love, the place you were raised and lived, where you met your wife-to-be and where you returned to work and retire.  But now, stop complaining and finding things wrong with where you are now. Stop  listening to complainers and the unhappy people.  You might feel you are in exile, (self-imposed,I might add) but it is here that you are to make your home. Get over it. Grow up." 

After God’s chastisement to me through Jeremiah, I went on to read this promise:

29:10b-14 ….I will attend to you and will confirm My promise concerning you to restore you to this place. 11 For I know the plans I have for you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. 12 You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and places where I banished you”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “I will restore you to the place I deported you from.” 

Taking liberties with what God said to Jeremiah, let me state: Even when I visit my “home” from which I am exiled, it is not the same now as it was when I lived there 5 years ago. There are many things different now than when we left.  And the friends I had then are remain my friends but they have found other friends to take my place since I left for a foreign country called North Carolina. So “home” is not the same, which leads me to think that since my birth, I have always been living in exile. Home is not first, a location, or number of friends nor family members close by.  Oh, it helps, believe me, but everything is transitory.  Then where is “home?” God says it clearly.  ‘Home is with Me’. So, no matter where you live on earth and the blessings that you have received where you have lived, they are not your home. You can even go back to where you think “home” is and it will not be the same nor will it be your “home” again. "I am your HOME." I realize that my HOME is with God and will be forever with Him in Heaven.  No other place can I call home. 

Let me say in closing.  Since my near death experience, I am more aware of my HOME.  It is God, in Him and with His Son and His Holy Spirit. And look forward to seeing you at the GREAT ETERNAL  HOMECOMING.

GRACE AND PEACE,

Quentin

Sharecropper's Inheritance

11 II 25