“Hear my prayer, Lord,
    listen to my cry for help;
    do not be deaf to my weeping.
I dwell with you as a foreigner,
    a stranger, as all my ancestors were.

PSalm 39:12

Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.

Exodus 23:9

Alienation. The ultimate loneliness: to be alone among strangers, to be truly lost.

We can feel that alienation from God when we are outside of his protection, wandering in the wilderness of sin. We know him, yet we are not with him. We need to travel from where we are to where he is and ask him to take us back.

Others feel this alienation too. Not just from Grace, but from community. If we cannot emulate the God who calls people in and gives them a place to belong, what right do we have to claim his name?

Ethan Kirl