Hidden Immigrants

Hidden immigrants look like they are native born, like they fit in. But, when you interact with them, there is something as distant and unreachable in their personhood as the foreign country in which they were raised or in which they lived for an extended period of time.

This last week has been so encouraging for me as I met a hidden immigrant from Spain and immigrants from South Africa and Finland. We may have lived in vastly different countries, but we don't have to justify our existence, or explain why we see things differently. Being different brings a sense of belonging.

Christ-followers are anything but similar. They come from all types of family backgrounds, countries, economic and social status groups. Yet, their love for Jesus unites them. But, that's typically where the commonality stops. Division sets in with music preference, dress, who has been on a mission group, who is more committed at church, who has life more put together, and so on.

I read this morning that Christianity is the only faith in which its members claim that following God is a delight. Sadly, that delight is experienced privately, between the believer toward God and withheld from Christians whose differences pose some sort of threat.

Western Christians often live as hidden immigrants. They carry inside them a foreign beauty that comes out when around Christians they get-along-with or when on trips of goodwill and mercy. Their beauty decays when its compartmentalized to certain groups, times or places. This beauty is not of their own making, but comes from God. They have a unique privilege of living IN this beauty, whether they are among other Christians or not.

Hidden immigrants know where they are from. They carry the beauty of the old home within them. They love connecting with others from that world. But, this hidden culture, in all its beauty, becomes toxic if loneliness, isolation, discontent, suspicion or pride sets.

I am challenged by what it means to walk with integrity in who God made me and in how to share the wealth given me. The best example is Jesus, and I don't mean that tritely. Christ was the ultimate hidden immigrant. He came from heaven to a depraved world that did anything but accept him. He had every reason to judge the pettiness in others or to withhold his love from those who annoyed him. Yet he lived with integrity; true to himself and to God and God's kingdom ways. He did not live to exert his perfect self, or to belong to the best group of Hebrews.

Jesus shared his beauty when teaching in and out of synagogues; when extending mercy while on trips to other towns, and when walking the streets in his own hometown. His passion, his worship, his connection with others was not relegated to what he was doing nor to his location. His passion was in in God the Father and so the Father was in him.

I find comfort in God's compassion towards me, that He remembers my frame. He knows how I am made and how I struggle walking in integrity with Him in me. I don't have to be perfect. I just need to walk.