Have I mentioned how tired I am of moving?
Maybe I was super slow at packing my stuff and am now super slow at unpacking my stuff because I know everything is all temporary. A few months in the Chan household? Temporary. One more year in Binghamton? Temporary. It's all too long not to unpack at all and too short to fully settle in and call it home.
One thing's for sure: it's really making me think about what's really important to me and what isn't. It's really hard. I've learned to let go of a lot of things moving from my upstairs room to my new room downstairs, but just thinking about my tiny room in Binghamton makes me realize I'll have to toss or give away even more from my room here if I don't want to live in a cramped space full of stuff I don't use.
I wonder how people in the Bible did it. People in the Bible were always on the move. Saying that reminds me of Urbana '09 when Ruth Padilla DeBorst spoke about "The Movement of Peoples." She talked about people who are uprooted from their homes and from all that's familiar to them:
"God is not only with the foreigners, immigrants, and refugees, God's spirit is in these unlikely heroes, carrying out God's purposes through them."
"Jesus sees, Jesus loves, Jesus recruits people on the move."
"Only God's love can break us out of our selfish layers of protection so that we can become channels of God's love even in hard places."
"And the Holy Spirit still does so today because all people are full of worth. Yes, we are sent like Jesus into the world to teach, preach, heal - to aid those in need, rescue the oppressed, release the suffering. But our illusions of power and sufficient superiority often make us look condescendingly at migrants, refugees, immigrants as mere charity cases that allow us the chance to rack up brownie points on the compassion scale. No. We are called to recognize Christ in their faces, to marvel at the gifts, insights, and strengths God has granted them; to learn from their resilience and courage; to walk alongside them in mutual accountability, discipleship, and community."
I just listened to DeBorst's message again from the Urbana 09 website. It still resonates in me, probably more now than before because of how much I've grown deeper in my understanding and practice of hospitality. Over the past semester I've begun to grow this little idea of a dream to open my own hostel or inn or some place where people on the move could find rest and possibly a kind of home they hadn't experienced before. I think I'd really love that. I'd love to hear their stories and learn from people of all ages and really care for them and meet their most basic needs.
Sigh. Maybe one day. It's possible.
I just want to settle down. I ready to work at things long-term, longer than the super fast semesters and years of college life. But at the same time I don't want to get stuck or get cynical about routines in such a way that my trust in God would suffer.
I wonder how people like Abraham and Moses must've felt from traveling so much. It must have been really hard to keep moving and stay focused on following God's lead.
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