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Life in strange places

Imagine looking down from a high place across the vast expanse of the Arabian desert where stunted vegetation, wind-smoothed rock formations, scurrying reptiles, pitiless heat and dust were at home. Imagine seeing a nation and its herds down there, living, and even prospering, despite their hardships. Life in a strange place.

Paul, a prisoner (maybe in Rome but more likely in Caesarea—see the literature on the matter) writes to the Philippians (4:22) about “saints in Caesar’s household”. That’s in Nero’s household! That’s life in a strange place.

Peter speaks to his Jewish brothers and sisters and sends the greeting of “she who is in Babylon, chosen together with you” (1 Peter 5:13). Whether he has in mind the ancient but now diminished and all-but-forgotten city of Babylon on the Euphrates or under a figure he means Rome—it’s still life in a strange place.

See the old man with a body older than his years, now “as good as dead” and his long-barren wife (Abraham and Sarah) and remember that they became the parents of countless children. Life in a strange place.

I know there are people that don’t believe this and I know that some of them can’t believe it right now, for one reason or another, but God is always doing that, isn’t he? In strange places he brings life into being.

In cruel homes we find gentle Christians. In homes awash with cynicism and criticism we find generous-hearted people who continue to believe that all wrongs will be righted and that the proper response to life is hope in God. Right alongside deeply entrenched bitterness and hardness we find people that give and forgive as if it were easy (though we all know it’s very costly to them). Life in strange places.

I remember some years ago we finally felt compelled to surface our driveway. I had them spray it with weed-killer, then spread a million tons of gravel over it and follow that with thirty million tons of hot, sticky tar and gravel. Then I had them bring in a billion-ton steam-roller that rolled all that stuff flatter than a starfish. Goodbye weeds and dirt. I don’t know how long it was after that that one day I stubbed my shoed-toe on a teeny-weeny mound in the middle of that driveway. I took a close look and there, peeping up out of a tiny hole, was a little yellowy sprout of some kind. I was dumbstruck. Life in a strange place.

One day in all the graveyards of the world there’s going to be a stirring.