I’ve noticed every year when we receive new exchange students in our high school how excited our students are to talk with them. then have fun with the cultural interchange and overcoming the language barriers. The locals really enjoy the stranger form another land…

it got me thinking….

I’m reading through 1 Peter and in chapter 2 we find these word from the apostle:

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 1 Peter 2:11-12 (NIV)
and I thought about those exchange students… they are living in a land that is not their own, one day they will be going home… so they learn, they listen, and they contribute to the foreign land they are living in… and for the most part the locals get a kick out of them…. I wonder if the citizens of this planet enjoy the citizens of Heaven? Are we living such good lives that even though they don’t understand us, they can’t help but smile… maybe shaking their head in disbelief that we don’t understand how things work around here or how oddly interesting our habits, conversations, and attempts to understand the locals is somehow charming and winsome in some strange way….
I don’t know… I’m afraid I’m too quick to give up on being foreign and I just try to blend in…