Friday,
January 27, 2023
My servants and maids consider me a stranger. I am like a foreigner to them. I
was a father to the poor and assisted strangers who needed help.
I have never turned away a stranger but have opened my doors to
everyone. Job 19:15, 29:16, Job 31:32
As the ancient Job found out,
you can go from Hero to Zero in an afternoon. It’s somewhat like that in ministry, moving
from church to church; always a new town.
There’s an old joke minister’s families know too well. There was a knock on the parsonage door, and
a child answered. The caller asked the
child: Are your parents home? The child replied: Pa’s in his study prayin’ an’ Mom’s
upstairs packin’. When the
Bishop’s cabinet is busy making appointments for the coming year, ministerial
families take out the checklist on what definitely needs to be packed, and that
which is to be discarded to make moving lighter and easier. Old Job learned what Methodist clergy live.
Part of that life is being a
stranger. Moving often to a new place brings
out the “stranger syndrome”. You’ve just
spent several years in one place, and you are uprooted. All the daily activities and routines must be
re-thought; school, dentist, doctors, grocery stores, traffic patterns,
re-registering to vote, forwarding addresses filed, new telephone numbers, and
on, and on…! And, for good measure,
there is a whole plateful of new names to go with new faces. And it all hinges on where the Bishop decides
to send you next.
Job’s take on strangers had to
have changed dramatically that day his wealth, health, family, and community
reputation were drained to the dust.
Suddenly, his awareness of what it means to lose everything, and gain a personal
and incisive understanding of how strangers are sometimes (oftentimes) despised. All Job’s neighbors, fellow city officials,
and even friends were wondering just what really bad-awful thing
he had done to tick God-off that much.
And yet, Job hadn’t done anything wrong; his head was spinning…he’d been
appointed to his next, and most dreaded chapter in life, suffering
stranger!
About four weeks into this new relationship,
Kathryn made an appointment with the church secretary to come to my
office. When she came through the door that
morning, she was carrying a box just a little larger than a loaf of bread. She placed it on my desk with a smile, and
said: Just a little something to
welcome you to our community; hope you like it. When I opened the box, there was Emmett
Kelly, Jr…the praying clown. Kathryn
said, I have a little jewelry store, and I carry these for sale. I heard you say in your sermon last week that
your parents took you to the circus back in the 1950’s and you saw Emmett Kelly
in person. I thought you ought to have
him here.
That kindness, Kathryn’s welcoming
the stranger, has stayed close to my heart these past 30+ years; the
praying clown is still on my desk…and I am reminded every day what it’s like to
be a stranger, and welcomed like family.
For You Today
There are about 2,000 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper on
today’s topic, explore some of these:
5-Part Series: While You’re Waiting for God to Answer: Part 1
Part
2 Part
3 Part
4 Part
5
Images: Title Pixabay.com Images without citation are either personal
property of the author, or in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
