Finding Your Life After Living in Exile
finding your life after living in exile
…can God help you recover from a setback?
A while back I did a series of posts on how to recover from a “Crash and Burn” experience. It came from a series of talks I did about the Bible stories that tell of the years that Jews lived in exile.
I’d like to revisit that idea. In fact, I’m toying with the idea for a future book. I thought I might just explore the idea here with you for a minute.
The Bible is a Story of Exile
As I looked at the Bible, it dawned on me that you could look at the entire narrative as following an exile motif, that is, an overarching theme of exile.
You barely get into the Bible when God sends Adam and Eve into exile from the Garden of Eden. Humanity is still in that exile today.
Or in Genesis 12, God calls Abraham to the Promised Land. But when he arrives he faces a famine and goes to Egypt, “in exile”.
After returning to Canaan his descendants again return to Egypt to live for over 400 years in exile. Even after they escape they remain in the Wilderness for another 40 years.
At last they return to The Promised Land, but a few hundred years later they land in exile again, this time in Babylon.
Finally, both Jews and Christians scatter from Jerusalem after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. As the Bible says, we travel as aliens and strangers in a foreign land.
Exile is Our Story
I find the Bible's theme of exile comforting because it was in those hard places that people met God.
So, when we find ourselves in a personal exile: divorced, unemployed, grieving a death, displaced, canceled, de-friended, or any one of a number of lonely places in life, we can find a Bible story that speaks to us. We learn of a God who is present to comfort us and lead us back to a land of promise.
Update: to learn more about exile and how to return from it, I did write the book. It’s called, “Return from Exile.” See below to learn more about it.
Question: What exile are you in now or have you been in the past?
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