Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: foreigner

  • Devotional of the week: Your people, my people (3 in Pilgrim series)

    All made in the image of God. Photo: Kat, flickr
    All made in the image of God. Photo: Kat, flickr

    “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” Ruth 1:15–17

    Some eighteen years ago, a verse from the book of Ruth was impressed on my mind as my new husband and I approached the town where he would be a curate: “Your people will be my people and your God my God.” The thought was daunting, for I was not long in the UK and was still getting used to the ways of my new countrypeople. As we entered the high street, these words reverberated within me. So much so that I wondered if living there would entail a cost.

    Our time there was cut short, for tensions within the parish meant that the vicar was signed off on stress-related sick leave. My husband was left adrift. I began to consider whether I really did want “these people” to be “my people,” for I had witnessed behavior that left me sad and disquieted. But I knew that whatever their actions, these were still “my people,” for I too had the propensity for similarly uncharitable thoughts and deeds.

    In the book of Ruth, we see a daughter-in-law so committed to her dead husband’s mother that she is willing to forsake her country and move with Naomi back to Bethlehem. Ruth becomes a pilgrim, serving her mother-in-law with grace and selflessness. For many, the story is familiar – Naomi finds a relative who agrees to marry Ruth, thus redeeming her under the law so that she can carry on the family line. Ruth and Naomi’s needs for protection, care and love are met.

    All over the world, God’s people are our people. Who will he send on your path today?

    Prayer: Lord, open my eyes and my heart to embrace your children.

  • A song in a foreign land – a poem

    This morning I’m digging into one of my favorite activities – writing some Bible reading notes. This will be a set for Inspiring Women Every Day, for the month of November 2015, on the theme of foreigners and strangers. After the Garden of Eden, we’re all strangers now. Here’s a little poem I wrote as I reflected on Psalm 137. Do you feel foreign?

     

    DSCN8576By the rivers we sat
    By the water we wept
    Water rushing by
    Tears upon our face
     
    Zion we remembered
    Jerusalem, our home
    On the trees our harps
    No songs to sing
     
    But our captors demanded
    Our tormentors said to sing
    “Sing us a song of Zion!”
    “Sing us a song, now!”
     
    But how can we sing?
    How the songs of the Lord
    In a foreign land?
    How can we sing?
     
    If we forget our home
    May our tongues not move
    Our highest joy, Jerusalem
    With God, our home, at peace.
     
    © 2015 by Amy Boucher Pye

  • Devotional of the week: Hebrews 11:8–12 (4 in series)

    Strangers and foreigners

     

    By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country… (Hebrews 11:8–12)

    My great-grandfather was a pilgrim to a strange land. In 1898 he left Germany for America, having to renounce his German citizenship. This windmill was built in the village he lived in before he was born, which we visited in 2006.
    My great-grandfather was a pilgrim to a strange land. In 1898 he left Germany for America, having to renounce his German citizenship. This windmill was built in the village he lived in before he left, which we visited in 2006.

     

    A closeup from the windmill - faith, hope, and love.
    A closeup from the windmill – faith, hope, and love.

     

    One US Independence Day, I was ending a silent retreat at an Anglican convent before traveling back to Washington, DC to watch the fireworks by the Lincoln Memorial. While on retreat God had impressed on my heart the story of Abraham, especially from these verses in the book of Hebrews. Here was one who left his home and became a stranger living in a foreign land.

    I felt like the Lord was speaking to me through Abraham’s story. For I had been asking God to confirm whether it was right to marry the Englishman I had been dating. I sensed that the marriage was right, but I was starting to see that it would not be without cost. I also caught the irony – as I was celebrating our nation’s independence from the British, I was also affirming that eventually I would become a subject of the Queen.

    Abraham obeyed and went, not knowing where he was going. For me, in my excitement to marry my beau, I hadn’t considered that I might have to obey God in this union. For although I had visited the UK, I didn’t know where we would be living. I would not have guessed that we would move three times in our first five years. Or of the crushing homesickness that I would feel for my family. I didn’t know it then, but by faith I too would need to make my home in this promised land.

    And though the UK is now home, I often with Abraham long for the heavenly city. When I’m missing my American people or links, I try to cast my mind on the city where there will be no more mourning or crying or pain, where we will live in amazing unity and joy. Come, Lord Jesus.

     

    Father God, we often feel like strangers here on earth, whether in the country of our birth or another. Take this dissonance and use it for your glory.