On Nomads: Our Need for Christ

I made a friend last night at the coffee shop, who's still on my mind as I walk around, scatter about, and settle into the day.

He's about my age. Was born in America. But his family moved to Libya when he was a child. And whatever hopes that are born into a person for happiness, contentment, and peace...whatever naive feelings about life a child may have. They had been dashed away. His face pinched with pain. And disappointment.

"I have given up hope in humanity," he says while blinking his eyes quickly, nodding down to glance quickly at his phone.

He continues to tell me his story about growing up in a third world country, stuffed inside the pocket of poverty, about living with a terrible father, running away from his family and friends to Europe, and finally settling in Tulsa.

"I went back to my home a few years ago," he says. "I don't belong there. I know that now, after going back. But I don't belong here, either. I don't belong anywhere. I don't get it. There's just so much. So much I want to say. But there's nothing to do about it. Nothing."

Life in America is funny, ya know? We have our problems. We have the stress that happens between the time we go to work and when we make it back home. And then we have that other stuff in relationships. But it's contained. It's a comfortable place we've placed ourselves in as a nation.

My friend sees that about us. And he hates what he sees. Thinks it's a shallow way to live.

And I sit here in my chair pondering the night with my new friend. I think about how his life must have been in Libya. What must his father have done to drive him away, to the other side of the world?

And I think about what he says about America. It's not the place he thought it would be. I consider what it is about our culture that is shallow. I think about what we need in comfort. I realize that it's a hard thing to deny...this need to be comfortable in everything. I'm wonder too, if comfort is something we seek just because if we admitted we wanted more than that...anything truly to make us happy as people, that we'd have to confront some deep pain in our hearts. We'd have to come face to face with our past. And the things that stole away our naive notion about life, love, and happiness.

I am a nomad of sorts. I think we all are, in one way or another. At one point in time or another, we all have been disappointed and have walked away from the pain, to distance ourselves from it.

Our hearts are more fragile than we like to admit, sometimes. And I think the odd things we do, the opinions we hold onto about other people and places can be born from the wounds we collect over the years and the assumptions we make about life after the wounds have had a chance to change our expectations and our hope about finding joy.

There is nothing on earth that redeems the broken heart. There is only more pain. Over and over.

But there is Christ. And there is the Father. And I believe my friend was created to be happy. And I believe he is a glorious human being, not because he has accepted Christ yet, but because he was created, gloriously, in the image of God.

There is a beauty in all of God's creation. And I think it's time for His people to stop talking. If we can't listen first. And begin to appreciate the beauty of what it means to be a child of an eternal father.

My friend has hope. I pray he does not give up his search. I pray his despondency does not corrupt the flame that still flickers and cries in quiet desperation for Christ.

Here's something to think about: we can struggle for the American Dream. We can beat all the odds in order to succeed. And in the end, can taste the beautiful disaster of what it means to have attained the dream. We can, like the rest, build a castle and defend ourselves from the possibility of any true meaning or purpose for life. We can, in the words of David Gilmore, become "comfortably numb."

Lord, let it never be. Keep me in your love. And take my friend. Take him. He is your creation. And he needs your love.