Check out this one: "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and foreigner. I am the LORD your God." -Leviticus 19:9-10
And: "'When foreigners reside among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." -Leviticus 19:33-34
Firstly, when I saw "poor and foreigner" grouped together, I instantly understood why. In your native setting, you might be intelligent, educated, and pretty good at handling basic transactions, but when you are in a foreign context (especially in a foreign language!) you basically come across as mentally disabled. I am not saying this lightly, or to make a cheap joke. There are multiple people I know, even friends, who literally seem to me to be slightly... developmentally challenged, because of the way they speak English. I may never know this side of heaven whether they are actually slow or not but the fact remains that when you can't speak a language well, that is the impression you give off.
"Poor" implies disadvantaged, in need of a little extra grace, lacking. "Foreigner," I am learning firsthand, is the same. As for the second Scripture passage, I would like to take this opportunity to say I could never have expected a better reception from the people here. People are always inviting me to do things, and feeding me, and giving me things and offering to drive me places, and actually driving me places and then home again, even though where I live is on no one's way anywhere. I realize full well that right now I have nothing to give back to them. All I can offer them is my sincere gratitude. In the future, I hope I can also offer them friendship, but friendship takes time to flower, of course, and now the best I can give is a stranger's kindness.
It's not like I haven't spent time alone, but I want to be very clear about something: I am a person who loves being in her room. Sometimes I don't want to leave it, even to do something better than test-drive free music from Noisetrade while playing Spider Solitaire to stave off the boredom. If I am getting out and about all the time (and, I am), it's because people are initiating with me. It makes me see my need; the point of this paragraph is that I would be "lost" (too harsh a word, I know) without the intentional generosity of others calling or texting me, then driving here to pick me up. And frankly, I am pretty sure this is also because I am foreign. In America, I know there are some settings I'd be completely at ease in. One is at a Target. Another is at a Starbucks. Guess what, Saint Claude doesn't have either one of those. Those are just two examples, but here I'm pretty sure there are no settings at all here that I'd be "completely at ease in" (in which I'd be completely at ease...). We foreigners need help, is my point. We need people to leave grapes and gleanings lying around so we can eat while we're trying to track down the phone number to get our fridge fixed and figure out a grocery shopping schedule and transportation options.
Being a foreigner and "dropping" from being a person who is quickly easily understood almost all the time (gosh I hope so) to being someone who stumbles over the simplest things and uses the wrong gender with nouns, and talks in a weirdly formal way that might be textbook right but doesn't resemble how most people actually talk, makes me think of the options we all have in life. There are some people who will never do what I did, in moving to a foreign country alone, and as a result they may never quite realize how great it is to be understood when you open your mouth. I wouldn't blame anyone for staying in their home settings. It's no fun to feel like everything you say is dumb, and you have a thick accent.
But on some days, I have this thought, and admittedly its prideful, but it's like: "Do you realize who I am? I promise I'm not some babbling stupid person. I have friends, and stuff. I know how to buy things, and to say and understand numbers, even long ones, and communicate effectively with a telephone. And from time to time I am even clever with words, just not in your language." I've always associated a willingness to "drop in status" with the Christian life. By no means am I trying to say I did that on purpose, or that it's good I did it. Not at all, I just see a metaphor here I can't resist.
Jesus was the ultimate example of "Don't you know who I am? Don't you know what I'm capable of?" His Father would have sent Him more than 12 legions of angels at the drop of a hat (and apparently a legion was like 6,000), but instead He opted to live like us, you know, giving up certain perks of being a deity for a time so that He could show true love. Because love would never pull rank. Love wouldn't feel like it needed to say, "Seriously, I'm not as dumb as you probably think right now. Seriously, I'm way more powerful than this, you've got to believe me. If I wanted to I could call my dad, he's pretty famous and rich, no big deal, and he would fix everything, I swear."
Thus, I will conclude by saying that even though I feel dumb sometimes, I'm grateful for this opportunity. I love the idea of hospitality, and I've always wanted to be good at it, and I am learning tons from being on the receiving end in such an extreme way.
Praise and glory to God for His kind children, and His generous heart that humans share as His image-bearers even when they don't know Him.
I both understood and liked this post. :)
ReplyDeleteSuch a good comparison; that's definitely true. There are few things able to make one feel more foolish than being in another culture trying to get by with one's second/third language.
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