By: Betty Beck, Associate Pastor at Heartland
Do you ever feel like you’re in exile?
There are many things that can make us feel this way. It certainly could be the environment we find ourselves in. But, on the other hand, it could be a feeling of being trapped by the memories of our past mistakes and failures.
Exile is never a pleasant place to be. We feel strange, like second-class citizens. Out of place.
Although I know few people who have lived in actual geographic exile, I believe most of us can think about a situation that has us troubled, isolated, and left us crying for relief.
In times like this, at first, all of our energy is spent trying to find what we have known, something familiar. But we can never seem to get back there because it seems as if something is keeping us captive and holding us back.
And it’s not too long before we get so comfortable in this discomfort that it starts to feel normal. We adjust to our exile so we can survive.
Exile becomes our new normal. We forget what it was like to feel at home and in place.
Here’s the fact of the matter: If exile has become our new normal, a wake-up call may be in order.
What wakes us up? Knowing that we can’t continue to live like this? A realization that we are not the horrible person that our thoughts tell us we are? Realizing we need to take a stand for what is right and true?
Our wake-up call could simply be a feeling that we don’t align with the mad world around us.
The good news is that, for God and His people, exile has never had the final word.
We cannot come out of exile on our own. It is God who gives us what we need to have victory over what has exiled us. It is a call to give up ourselves and our ways and have ears to hear the Word of God.
When we wake up from our contentment with exile, we are called to action. A call to pull ourselves from our “exiled” thoughts and, instead, look to the thoughts of God. Coming out of exile requires the realization that His ways are greater than our ways and that His plan is so superior to any plan we could devise.
This Advent season, as we anticipate and prepare for Christmas, may we give up what keeps us in exile for something better. Let us leave behind what keeps us captive and move toward the place where God is calling us and be the person God is calling us to be.
God has given us all the tools we need to come out of exile: prayer, His Word, community, His light to light our way, His love, and His very Spirit to be with us. Along with His grace, it may take work. But everything good is worth the effort.
During Advent, we anticipate not only the celebration of the arrival of the promised Jesus but also the anticipation of His second coming. While we celebrate and anticipate, let us look to our Lord to break the chains of exile and take us to a place of love, joy, and freedom.