The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.
—Leviticus 25:23

What always held me back from feeling settled in Lafayette was the fact that it is such a transitional town. When I left, several people in my church commented that it was hard to imagine the church without me. They had arrived later, and as far as they were concerned, I had been around forever. I was the permanent one—possessing eight years of permanence!

You can’t shake that unsettled feeling when you live in a town like that. You know that you are a sojourner. You can’t fool yourself into believing you’ll be there forever.

In the Old Testament, as Israel was preparing to move into the promised land of Canaan, the Lord instituted a series of laws about how they were to treat the land. They were not to overwork it or sell it permanently because the land was his, not theirs. They were tenants; he was the landlord. He was their host; they were his guests.

For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding.
—1 Chronicles 29:15

When you’re a stranger and a sojourner, you feel your impermanence on a visceral level. You could disappear, and the world could go on just fine without you. You flit about like a phantom, a shadow, moving from place to place, with no substance.

When I moved away, I had many people come to me to wish me well and to say goodbye. It was hard for me to say goodbye—not because the separation was too painful but because it was perhaps too easy. Most of these friends I will be able to keep up with on Facebook, after all. There will be few severed relationships.

And this was not the first time I’d had to say goodbye. The fact is that it was simply the conclusion to eight years of goodbyes. When you live in Lafayette, people come and go every year. They pass like phantoms through the town, taking classes or working a temporary job until career or family draws them away. You make friends, then let them go, then make new friends, then watch them leave as well. And when it comes time for you yourself to leave, it is not your closest friends who have remained to see you off. So “goodbye” is not as hard, because it’s fundamentally no different from any of the others.

O LORD, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Selah
—Psalm 39:4–5

Here in the West, we do our best to quarantine death, to hide it away in hospitals and nursing homes, to pretend that we will live forever. We do our best to make this world a heaven, to live in a nice neighborhood and own a shiny car and find a purposeful career. But this requires a lot of transience and rootlessness, a lot of moving around. So even though we can postpone the death of our bodies, we cannot avoid the isolation of lost friendships. Our impermanence is more obvious than ever.

Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears!
For I am a sojourner with you,
a guest, like all my fathers.
—Psalm 39:12

The earth is the Lord’s. I’m just passing through. I am a sojourner here, a guest of the Lord’s, just like my father was, and his father before him—a man who did not last long enough for me to meet him. There is no hope to be found in our relationships with one another. Hope must be anchored to an immovable object; I can’t find hope in my relationships with other people any more than a ship at sea can anchor itself to the wind and fog.

Who does David, king of Israel, appeal to in Psalm 39? He appeals to the one who created the land on which he is kneeling, the one who owns it and will continue to own it thousands of years after David vanishes from the earth. The Lord is the only permanent mooring in a world of passing shadows.

So may you cling to the Rock which will outlast the world. And may you find eternal life by binding yourself to our eternal God.

So, without further ado, I present the highly motivating Meditation 10:  “Hope.”

UPDATE:  The timing couldn’t be better.

But where to begin?

Why not start here with meditation #7 from The Book of Happiness:  Possible.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. After a Cinderella season last year which saw a revitalized Saints team go 10-6 and reach the NFC championship game, the Saints were a trendy pick to reach the Super Bowl. Advertisers jumped onto the bandwagon, featuring Reggie Bush, Drew Brees, and the Saints on their commercials. Yet all the hype failed to translate onto the field. After a 41-10 thrashing by my beloved Indianapolis Colts, the Saints continued to slump, losing to Tampa Bay, Carolina, and Tennessee before finally recording a win against Seattle. The Saints lost their power running back in Deuce McAlister, while Bush has been disappointing and Brees, a minor deity here in Purdue country, has been poorly protected by his offensive line and has thrown more interceptions than any other quarterback in the league.

I remember reading several sports articles and seeing a TV segment last year which focused on the hope the Saints were bringing to the city of New Orleans. The team was supposed to inspire and encourage the city, helping it recover from the damage due to Hurricane Katrina. It was a heartwarming story, but in the back of my mind, I was always a little troubled. Wasn’t it dangerous for the people of the city to set their hopes on a football team? Shouldn’t they be turning to the Lord God instead for hope in the midst of trouble?

Sure enough, the New Orleans Saints appear to have failed their city. Perhaps they will be able to dig themselves out of their slump. But it’s clear that this inspiring story of human achievement was never going to last. Our hope cannot be placed in football teams, nor in any people or merely human abilities. They will always fail and disappoint. Rather, our hope must be set on the living God, who alone can strengthen us and provide for us an eternal home and kingdom.

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”
—Psalm 20:7

Colossians 1:3-5
3 We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, 4 since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, 5 because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel.

Just as he does in 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul brings into play here his formula of faith, hope, and love. Here, he explains how our faith in Christ Jesus and our love for all the saints are brought about. They are motivated by the hope laid up for us in heaven-the hope that we now have because we have heard “the word of truth, the gospel” (v. 5). This precious promise of Christ is that “you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him” (vv. 21-22). Our hope is not merely to make it to heaven, but to stand before Christ as blameless when we get there. Because of the faithfulness of Christ, this is a hope and a guarantee. I know I need to dwell on the gospel a lot more than I do…the Spirit will use it to change my heart, building my faith in Christ Jesus and my love for fellow Christians.

I imagine the women who went to visit Jesus’ tomb had a similar lack of faith. They had just seen Him crucified. They fully expected to show up at the tomb and find Him still dead.

What a surprise it must have been to find an angel who said, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said” (Matthew 28:5-6). This must have caught them totally off guard. Despite the fact that Jesus had said He would rise again (as the angel pointed out), the women hadn’t understood or believed a word of it.

I’m afraid to admit that sometimes, my prayers are raised to a dead God. I don’t see Jesus as alive—as He really is! I forget that He is risen and that He is at the right hand of the Father, victorious over sin and death, the firstborn from among the dead, and the righteous Judge over all the earth. The angel challenges me, “Come, see the place where he lay” (v. 6). Jesus is no longer dead. He is alive!

I thank God that He has mercy on us despite our lack of faith. The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus.” The Lord said, “Seek, and you will find” (Matthew 7:7). God honors a heart that earnestly seeks Him even in weakness. Jesus says to us, “Do not be afraid” (Matthew 28:10). He knows and understands our weakness, and His mercy comes new and fresh every morning.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).