3. Live Life as a Sojourner

In the last two posts I've talked about Who, and Where, and What For, but not really Why. So here's the Why.

Everyone has some thoughts about what the Point Of It All is, this thing we call life: if by a lucky happenstance you are born as an affluent Westerner you get about 80 years of relative comfort clinging precariously to a rock hurtling through space, then you die. If you're an average African, you die 30 years sooner.  Whenever it happens, you die, and if you're particularly lucky a few people remember you for a few years. Then they die. And so on. The writer of the book Ecclesiastes said all this was nothing more than "chasing after the wind".

So most people think there has to be some point to it all: some reason why getting through those 80 years isn't just a futile exercise in stoicism. People's reasons are different, doubtless you have your own.

For some people it's money. For some it's fame, for others infamy. For some it's longevity, for some service, for some experience. Some want to tell good stories, some want to go along for the ride. Some want to leave a big legacy, some want to die penniless philanthropists. Some want to change the world for the better, some for the worse. There are probably as many reasons as there are people who reason.

A wonderful and stately couple who mentor us have a corkboard in their kitchen. On the board is a map, and stuck in the map are lots and lots of pins that show where their kids have served as missionaries. The couple themselves give almost all their time and energy to teaching relationship skills. They live to serve others: it's something which has really inspired us. The whole family epitomises living as sojourners.

A sojourner is someone who is passing through, someone transient. In The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle ('Conan Doyle!', I hear you shout, 'Surely you are mistaken, for undoubtedly that was Michael Crichton!'. To which I reply, 'Pah! Get thee and thy literary inexactitude behind me, fool!')... Where was I? Ah yes, The Lost World. As the protagonists are setting off into the unknown, one says "...to go and take a sporting risk, young fellah, that's the salt of existence, that's the worth of living, to not be dull and soft and comfy...", this written at the time of the great explorers, and enshrining the spirit of the age: to explore, to travel, to discover, to risk...to sojourn.

So what does it mean to live life as a sojourner? To me it means holding things lightly, treating everything we have as temporary and liable to be recalled. It means giving up a good job to do something cool, giving up a nice house to move somewhere exciting, and giving up a large and well-appointed comfort zone (with a coffee grinder and colour-matched scatter cushions) to step out and serve others. By no means do Christians have a monopoly on this kind of thinking, but I kind of think we find it a bit easier, a bit less of a wrench. Christianity, in its purest form, calls for sacrifice: giving up yourself for the benefit of others. I'm not talking about religion or denomination here, just the simplicity of Christ's life: love and sacrifice to spread a message of hope.

So everything we have is transitory. At best you have it, whatever 'it' is, money, experience, fame, for 80 years. Then it's gone. Pow. The sojourner recognises that, and treats everything, every moment, every opportunity, as temporary. The sojourner makes each minute count, takes every chance to make a difference, seizes crazy opportunities to do something brilliant. They do this because they know that wherever they are, they are simply on the road to somewhere else, and where they are going makes this short time look like a dull warm-up act.

That's what we aspire to.