חַס וְשָׁלוֹם

What would it truly look like to believe one did not belong to this world?

To live as an alien among uncomfortable rooms. To walk as one untethered to the same gravity that compels earthly creatures to be shrunken into smaller forms. To know that the final days of the story have already been written, and are coming quickly to reunite the wanderers to their true home.

Undoubtably, it would be a rootless freedom, if not mixed with the stranger's fears.

A stranger in a distant land does not have the same concerns as the father and mother looking to provide for a family. They float effortlessly from port to shore - they will not worry about where the food comes from, when the taxes must be paid, how the baby's clothes will be bought. They will sometimes worry about the shelter for the night, or the ferry passage in the morning, but these would be taken care of. And if that stranger had a Guide, promising that, though they might often find passage in a crowded and smokey ship, they would always find their way...

Such a journey would be worth days of trouble. 

But we do not believe anymore. We shrink down to the size of those around us - we tie ourselves to unanimated objects that rot away even as we polish them. We wed and give birth with no care to the fact that we are soon to leave this place, and sometimes we even accept a knotted thread tying our hands to someone who is not going with us. 

We dig little graves all around us. We pour our water into them, and we waste our precious time like one scattering fertilizers onto a burning field. 

But to be a stranger is to be strange. Unwelcome in some places. Unfamiliar to those who cannot see or hear. And this is a price that so few of us are willing to pay. 

That we would lose our senses, once sharp to the smell of death, and become so infatuated with this world that we are useless for the life to come - God forbid it. That we would grow so familiar with the sounds and sights of this world that we forget there is an even greater one we ought to be prepared for - God forbid it. That we would become as dumb and deaf as those that say there is no eternity, no life, no Yahweh - God forbid us!

And yet many of us are on that path even now. We are wandering in dark places, in shallow water, and no one is left to quicken our hearts. Only then, I pray that the Spirit might intercede for us. Pray a prayer we cannot even know the words to.