Alien

Been talking to some friends about moving to a new country and starting everything from scratch.

The Lord moves us in strange ways.


These days I'm able to be more content with life simply knowing that the feeling I've always felt - this sense of UNbelonging... this alienness in my life is not confined to any particular place I have not grown up in.

I remember walking the streets of Singapore growing up feeling a distinct feeling of being lost. I don't mean directionally... I'm referring to that weird empty, sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach because you know you don't belong here and you miss your home.

Fighting loneliness here in Thailand both when I was studying in MC and now as an expat in Bangkok, I still feel those bouts of displacement.

But having somehow come to terms with the transient nature of life here on earth... part of my grieving process in losing Reuben I suppose... this realization that I have since held on to - that nothing on earth is permanent, and yet we humans were created FOR the permanent... evident in our severe need for balance and our strong resistance to almost any type of change perceived. One discussion held in NewSong a few weeks ago (or was it just a week and a few days ago) was about Belonging. Finding a community of people to belong to... a place to call home.
In that moment, in that discussion... in voicing out my ideas to my friends... I understood that I will never ever feel completely at home. That I have been built with this innate restlessness to seek out something better, but will never receive satisfaction because there is no such thing on earth.

Does this sound like a bleak outlook on life?
I beg to differ!

I think that this outlook has somehow freed me - it has freed me of the need to keep looking, and merely to be content and happy with whatever God places in my hands to take care of in the present - be they good or bad.


Again, the story of the blind man.
Jesus was asked if it was the sin of the man or his parents that caused his blindness.
What Jesus said astounded the people:
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."

So often when things happen in our lives that we cannot understand, we question God's judgement because we cannot see how He might be working in our lives. But interestingly, the protagonist in whatever happens is not ourselves as we would imagine... rather, it is God!

What I'm trying to say (in a slightly confusing way) is that what God places in our hands for us to do is not so that we might do it and say "Oh thanks for making this work out for me!" Rather that we might say "Thanks for allowing me to do your work with what you give me."

The focus is not on me.... it is on God.


So in learning to let go of our own petty wants and needs for our lives.... we can learn true freedom and happiness when we simply do God's bidding. For does He not direct our paths along the ways which are good for us anyway?

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to HIS PURPOSE." ~Romans 8:28