I Came Here for the Work

Eleven years, and he still says back home about somewhere he has not lived since he was twenty-six.

He came for the work, because there was none where he was from, and it was meant to be three years. Three became five, and the children started school here, and now the eldest has an accent he does not recognize and calls this place home without thinking about it, which is a good thing and also does something to him he cannot explain.

He has never settled. That is the plain fact of it. He knows the roads. He can get anywhere in that city without thinking. And every one of those roads is a road he learned under protest, and eleven years on he still drives through it as though he were passing through it.

He is not miserable. Good job, good family, the house is fine. It is more that a whole decade has been spent in a place he has privately never accepted, and there is a low background hum of this is not where my life is really happening.

That is your city. That is your eleven years. And I want to speak into that, because there is a letter written to people who were somewhere they had not chosen, and what it tells them to do is startling.

What the exiles were told

Jeremiah writes to people who have been carried into a foreign city against their will and are all expecting to go home shortly.

And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.Jeremiah 29:7

Read it slowly, because there are three shocks in one verse.

The city whither I have caused you to be carried away. God does not disown the move. He puts His own hand on how they got there, and they were not asked.

Seek the peace of the city. Not endure it. Not survive it. Seek its good, actively, the good of the place itself.

For in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. Their own wellbeing is now tied to the wellbeing of somewhere they never wanted.

You are somewhere God has His hand on. Not somewhere you got carried by economics while He was looking elsewhere. The written word puts God inside the relocation rather than outside it, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man who still says back home about a place he left at twenty-six.

Now let me say something about your eldest, because that accent has been quietly costing you.

That child is not losing anything. That child is from here, in the ordinary way people are from places, and the fact that it is not your where does not make it less genuinely theirs. There is no disloyalty in it anywhere.

You are not being left behind by your own family. The written word tells exiles to plant gardens and have children in the place, which is to say to let real life happen there. The Holy Spirit is in that house and in that accent.

And now the hum, which is the actual damage.

This is not where my life is really happening. Eleven years of that is eleven years lived at a slight distance from everything, including the good job and the good family, and it is not homesickness at that point. It is a whole decade held at arm's length.

You are allowed to be here properly. Seek the peace of the city, and seeking is the opposite of hovering. The Holy Spirit has been in that city with you for all eleven years, and He was not waiting with you for it to be over.