Seasons Of The LordSampel

I Am a Stranger Here

“I am a stranger in the earth.” —Psalm 119:19

The Israelites were bidden to remember that they were not only strangers but strangers in a strange land. (See Exodus 2:22.) Yet they had the assurance of the presence and provision of one who could say, “I am a stranger with thee” (Psalm 39:12). Enlarging upon their sojourning in the wilderness, the writer to the Hebrews described them as being both “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). Is there any difference between a stranger and a pilgrim? We think there is, for a stranger is away from home and a pilgrim is on his way home. As believers we are both. In this meditation, I am concerned with the stranger aspect of our pilgrimage.

Our roots are not in earth. We have no fixed and final residence here, for like those of old we seek “a better country, that is, an heavenly” (Hebrews 11:16). This world, “the City of Destruction,” as John Bunyan described it, is but a stop on the way to our heavenly home. Like Israel, we are in a “land wherein thou art a stranger” (Genesis 17:8). The inhabitants of this land who are very much at home in it and are loath to leave it may think us strange as we live detached from the ways of the world, but this is part of the price we must pay for being followers of Him who had nowhere to lay His head and who said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). In the hymn “The King’s Business,” Elijah T. Cassel wrote:

"I am a stranger here, within a foreign land;

My home is far away; upon a golden strand;

Ambassador to be of realms beyond the sea,

I’m here on business for my King."