Scene: Someone sitting quietly in a refugee camp praying
Jock Stein
August 15, 2025
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Hebrews 11: 8-16 (NRSVA)
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, ‘as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.’
13 All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14 for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.
You have been living in a refugee camp all your life. It is your home, you were born there. But it is not home – home is where your parents lived, in Jerusalem before they had to leave in 1967, the Six-Day War. You often wonder what it would be like to live there today. Your parents are Maronite Christians, very old now; they gave you a Bible; and one day you pick it up and read:
Hebrews 11: 8-16...
At first it washes over you – Abraham, free man, on that journey to a land of freedom. Not my story. And then you think again, about a man who learned to live in tents, camping in a foreign land, and a few dots begin to join up. Like you, he didn’t know what his future would be. Like you, he had a choice – to see his life as just circumstance, or to see it as a journey of faith. Like you, he was deeply unsatisfied with where he had got to – childless, away from his ancestors, and (for you have read the Old Testament stories) in some danger from those around him. Yet he looked forward to something more than a few tents (or a lot of tents in your case), he was seeing something that God would build, a city. And he felt he was a stranger on earth, like you.
Your father was once a poet. But life as a refugee sucked the willingness to write out of him. Sometimes he said to you, “Write, write what is not yet in your soul.” You learned to write in the camp school, you have even read a bit of Arabic poetry, you know what a ghazal is – but no more. If Abraham received the power of procreation by faith, could you, perhaps, create a poem? If Abraham looked forward to a city with foundations, could you even write about Jerusalem, based on what your parents have told you? Eventually you cobble something together, with the help of Psalm 147:
Jerusalem
City of conflict and combustion,
city of international contention;
city of stones and ancient bones;
city of wonder, though the thunder
of its past rolls past the present,
makes the future nervous.
City of fears and separate parts,
city of tears and broken hearts,
city of God, below, above;
city of metaphor and meaning,
city to explore with mind
and map you make your own.
City of song and ancient praise,
city the Lord alone can raise
above the wrangles and the rasp
of rivalry between the faiths
that claim it – reinvent shalom,
so wounded outcasts name it home.
You show it to your parents. Amidst their tears they give thanks to God.
PRAY:
Father in heaven, we pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Restore her as a city with a foundation in what is right, and keep our faith fixed on what you have prepared for us. Bless all young people who seek to write for you and for their generation. We are all strangers in a foreign land, but you have promised us a home in glory, and in that we fix our faith, our hope, our comfort, Amen.
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