Strangers and Sojourners

Life goes ’round. You tackle the piles of laundry, the runny noses, the carpools, and the dishes. Sometimes the tedium gets to you.

And then something happens to shake you out of your reverie. You realize with startling clarity that life can change in a second.

It comes in the form a phone call, a letter, a headline. It brings news of a diagnosis, a catastrophe, an accusation, a lay off.

Suddenly that endless to do list of the ordinary seems a glorious luxury, a comforting normalcy that has slipped away and threatens to be gone for good. You would gladly pay the bills, mow the lawn, scrub the bathroom.

Over the past year I have been reminded again and again that we are “strangers and sojourners” in this life. Too, too often it is a vale of tears, a walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

I have watched good people suffer profound losses – a child, a business, a reputation, a disease. It rains on the just and unjust the same. I, like my phlegmatic toddler, want to stamp my foot and yell, “It not fair.”

But God is faithful. Today we see through a glass darkly, but one day we will bathe in His magnificent light. The suffering of this present time will be over, and eternity will lie before us.