Strangers and Pilgrims

 Four Student Missionaries Practicing the Art of Bowl Balancing

A/N: The following poem was inspired from observations made during my yearly vacation in the U.S. from my work in Cameroon. It struck me how my husband and I can cross two cultures without even thinking. Because of our time overseas, we will never have the same perspectives and insights. We have joined the relatively fortunate few who can say they’ve lived internationally. The following verse in Hebrews reminded me that our real citizenship is in heaven.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded by them and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”                                                                                                                          Hebrews 11:13

I.D.E.

It’s short for Interdivisional Employee

The title denotes work as a missionary

Commissioned to travel across the land and the sea

An ambassador of love in a new country

It’s a calling of excitement and adventure

With a small dash of difficulty to be sure

However extended you choose to venture

You will never emerge the same ol’ trencher

You used to belong within society

Cocooned within a wall of familiarity

Now life’s ejected you from its propriety

And you roam around with some anxiety

Your passport cover that’s within your berth

Has a color telling your place of birth

It’s a name that no longer gives much worth

To that peculiar patch of nascent earth

Typhoid malaria and midgets bold

Are just as normal as the common cold

Cockroaches and mosquitoes fourfold

Are no more foreign than the flies of old

Black white brown red or other hue untold

Dark wiry hair or tresses straight and gold

Blue eyes that calm or brown eyes that are bold

All are unique and lovely to behold

Adjustable hot water bathroom showers

Cultivated garden with neat rows of flowers

These novelties are pleasant and pass the hours

But none surpass a ‘net speed that empowers

Quiet skies with no flying jet from Boeing

In contrast noisy markets and roosters crowing

Your ears can recognize the sounds out flowing

You sleep even with taxi horns a blowing

You jam forward in funneling queue with a wink

Or stand in neatly cordoned lines without a kink

You can place your demand for fish chips and a drink

Or order ice cream from a menu on the brink

It’s nice to swallow water straight from the tap

But Berkey filters easily fill the gap

Water is quite wet anywhere on the map

Filtered or bottled you just untwist the cap

Traditional Braids and Dress

White man, nasara, mzungu, and names akin

Whatever others call you with a cheerful grin

All remind that whatever color of your skin

You’ll never be a native or blend and fit in

Always an enigma in the current population

Not once an ordinary citizen of the nation

Never a common local of current habitation

You float between different worlds like an aberration

Your culture is distinct and its own creation

Based on your experience with some frustration

Life’s not confined to one style or summation

A variety but God’s your one foundation

Even if you wanted to return to days of old

You would never fit within that former rigid mould

Branded alien foreign wild and uncontrolled

A single country can never keep you in its hold

Whether for the better or for the worse

You must now trek long and forever traverse

A broadened view of third cultural verse

Where strange and different is not a curse

You may settle or you may pick up and go

You may return and live in former chateau

Or make another place your lasting furlough

Or even stay within your current escrow

No longer a self-centered and brash young fox

You realize that now you think outside the box

On the fringe of social order wearing socks

New perspective on things that used to flummox

You’ve become a wandering pilgrim in waiting

A promised rest for body and soul awaiting

One day when Jesus appears heaven translating

Your spirit will be complete full never hating

Within heaven you are perfectly understood

Communication’s great and quarrels are withstood

All are together in unity and are good

Your lonely wandering heart is home as it should

At last you’re a pilgrim and a stranger no more

Upon the weary travelings you’ve closed the door

Your soul is content upon heaven’s dazzling shore

The label I.D.E. is gone forevermore

Closing Tradition at Church with Hand Holding - Can you find the white man?

“Now therefore, you are strangers and foreigners no more, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”                                                                                                            Ephesians 2:19