Wednesdays with Grace

Before leaving New York, I was told by a friend who grew up in the South that Birmingham is sometimes called the City of Sons-in-Law. Apparently the excellent women of Birmingham have a way of bringing back non-native husbands to live in the city.  I’m very happy to fit in with that pattern!

Christians should be people with a strong sense of place, because instead of creating us as floating spirits, God gave us bodies—and a body can only ever be in one location.  Our physical rootedness leads to responsibilities connected to the place in which we live. In Old Testament times, this was seen when the Israelites arrived in the land of Canaan. God divided up Canaan between the twelve tribes, and each tribe was then responsible for making its own inheritance suitable for habitation (Joshua 17:18). 

Someone might say it’s different for Christians, because we have no lasting inheritance in this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, thanks to Jesus’s self-sacrifice on our behalf, and so we’re looking forward to a better country (Hebrews 11:16). All of that is wonderfully true, but it doesn’t allow us to ignore the needs of our this-world neighborhood. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, three different men—a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan—travel on a road that will take them past a half-dead body left there by robbers.  It was a road that came with a responsibility.  But the priest and Levite wrongly pass by the injured man as if they were disconnected floating spirits, and only the Samaritan acts as a true neighbor to him (Luke 10:36). 

Now that I’m one of the sons-in-law of Birmingham, I’ll have new responsibilities tied to this city.  And what’s true for me individually is also true for us as a church.  We’re Grace Church Birmingham, and cultivating our sense of place will help us see the special role God has in store for us.

Bernard Howard