Hola, Northside! From Argentina
It’s almost 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles) from Wichita to Buenos Aires. Karen and I love Argentina, we have been welcomed again in a heart-warming way, and we are always safe in the care of Jonathan and Chema and Vanessa. We sincerely feel as though this place and these people are our ‘home away from home’. At the same time, we do not speak the language, and we are not always aware of our surroundings; even when protected by our brothers and sisters in Christ, we are strangers in Buenos Aires, we cannot fully feel at home.
In spiritual terms, all of us should remain ‘strangers’ – that’s the feeling that we’re supposed to have about our earthly lives and homes. At best, we hope to live with good people in familiar places, and we hope to be safe and secure at the end of each day. But this world is not our home.
In 2 Chronicles 19.15, David humbly spoke about Israel, “For we are strangers before (God) and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding (we have no hope, or prospect).” Paul wrote of our earthly home and our heavenly dwelling (2 Cor 5.1-2), “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling …”
To his church family in Ephesus, Paul reminded the Gentiles who had come to Christ (Eph 2.12-22 in part), “… remember that you were at that time separated from Christ … having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ … So, then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens … In Him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
Whether in Wichita or Buenos Aires, we must challenge society’s view that people should be satisfied and comfortable in this life, to ‘enjoy all that life offers’, to ‘eat, drink and be merry’. For a short season, that lie works for way too many people. They appear to be blessed in that lifestyle, but they are missing out on an eternal citizenship. God is doing great things in Argentina, and we will have more information to share when we return home.