The sounds of bicycle bells, car horns, and rickshaw motors are my constant companion. They intermingle with the clanging of construction in a city that always seems to be expanding and the Call to Prayer five times a day reminds us that we are in an unfamiliar place. As foreign as these things feel, these aren’t the reasons I feel out of sorts.
It’s more that I don’t know how to dwell in this place: this not yet, the in between. You’d think I would be accustomed to it by now. We moved out of our house nearly three months ago and lived with friends. We settled into a borrowed home and a new routine just in time to pack up again. We’ve been living out of suitcases for a couple weeks now: first in my parent’s house in the States and now with friends in our new home country.
Everyone asks how we’re getting settled in here after a few days here. Settling isn’t the right word. Not yet. We are learning our surroundings and how to get around but we are still living as guests. Someone else is shopping and cooking for us, cleaning up after us. Once we get our own apartment then I think we’ll start to understand just how lost we are in this place. Already I feel like a baby, so dependent on others for translation of the language, for interpretation of a culture that is so deeply different than my own, for my food, and for our schedule.
As we got ready to move and I dealt with the unknown that lies ahead, I turned often to the words in Exodus. I identified with the Israelites as they stepped out on newly dry land, trusting God to keep the waves from crashing down upon them. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I now feel like those same wanderers as they stumbled around in the uncertainty of the wilderness.
Reading the books of Moses, we have the hindsight to know that the Hebrews would spend forty years wandering. But as they journeyed they lived with total uncertainty, never knowing when they would feel settled, would have a true home. I wonder if some made their home in the in-between while others stopped living while they waited for the Promised Land? Certainly, life went on there in the wilderness. Babies were born and others left this life behind. People married and worshipped and lived their lives all while they were in the not yet of their sojourning.
I think I am looking for an arrival but I want to look instead for how life happens in all the places we are…
Is your soul finding deeper places to dwell while you live with the unknown?
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