HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 21, 2025 – It’s better to be a stranger in a place where, by all metrics, you don’t belong, than to be treated worse than a stranger in the land where you were born and raised and lived most of your life. When you feel like a stranger among your own, that’s a special kind of hell.

Jesus lived that hell both in Nazareth and throughout most of Judeah, including and especially Jerusalem. I’m not sure how Mary and Joseph felt about their home country when they were fleeing with baby Jesus to save him from being slaughtered at the hands of their own king, but it was probably much the same feeling Mary felt standing at the foot of the cross. The one place you expect to feel safe is within the boundaries of your own nation and among your own people, but how quickly that guarantee of safety can shift to the left or the right, making you both the feared enemy and the hunted prey.

God knows how difficult it is to live in the Kingdom while simultaneously living in the world, which is why he gave us the Kingdom in the first place, along with the promise that he’ll never leave us or betray us. The world, on the other hand, makes a career out of leaving us and betraying us, as if its full-time job is to get us to bleed out and then stand back and watch us burn. Jesus well knew this, which is why he cut his ties with the world when he started his ministry work, including his ties with his family. None of this was easy for him, but it needed to be done. Anyone who wasn’t on board with his ministry work would only get in his way.

It’s a special kind of hell to live among those whose values you don’t share and who either secretly or openly despise you. Knowing this, God has given us his Kingdom as a shelter and spiritual safe space. We wouldn’t survive without it. He’s also given each of us a few like-minded souls to relate to on a human level and to take courage from, people who’ve suffered as we’re suffering and as Jesus suffered but who are still forging onward to the end. As much we need and rely on God for everything and are grateful for all he does, we can still use a nod and a smile and a meeting of the eyes on occasion, or a comforting word and a pat on the hand. We need to see our own people among the seething masses pressing in on us from all sides, like Jesus looking down from the cross saw John and Mary looking up.

God arranges this for us, this meeting of the eyes with those who are genuinely our own. We may be spiritual enemies with nearly everyone around us, but God will give us what we need when we need it most.

See? He gave you this today.