“Strangers and Pilgrims”

Psalm 119:19-20  I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me.  My soul breaks with longing for Your judgments at all times.

The first line of verse 19 utters a great truth that we often forget:  I am a stranger in the earth.  We enter the world as little strangers who come into this life and soon adjust to the ebb and flow and then after elaborate preparations settles into this life as all there is.  But then, that door called death opens, and the stranger has become so comfortable that it is indeed difficult to pick up and leave.  The problem is that the person forgot that he is always a stranger and a pilgrim with staff in hand.  The problem is that he has been looking at the things which are seen and temporal, and not at the things which are not seen and eternal.  Thus, there is hurry and confusion and distress in the going away, all which may be helped and thoroughly hindered if a man will but say, I am a stranger in the earth.

All men are strangers.  Go into a museum and you see hanging there notched swords and helmets, but the owner is gone.  We are all strangers.  Back in 1985, Denise and I went to celebrate my parent’s wedding anniversary at Lawrence Welk’s Inn.  I entered this one area and a 60 year-old man said, “Well, hello young man.”  I responded, “President Roosevelt?”  He laughed and said, “I just play him on stage, TV, and the movies.”  He had the voice, the mannerisms, and the look like no one else.  We talked for more than an hour, and then he said that he wanted to come and visit me some time.  We lived in a humble shack behind an old house, but one day, I opened my door, and said to Denise, “President Roosevelt is here!”  He was on a mission of recovery—he wanted me to straighten out and at the same time make sense of his life.  I began with the plan of salvation in detail, and he responded that he had already had that crammed down his throat by other actors in the company of Annie (a play in which he played FDR).  He said you are knowledgeable in all subjects so just solve my problems and leave out the religion stuff.  After a couple of hours, I decided to bring out the heavy artillery.  I took him to meet my father, and see if he could overwhelm that “Gospel hardened” exterior.  Jack Denton, the actor who played FDR, left our home still lost in his sins.  He got to play FDR in 1986 in Crossings, but I never heard from him again.  A couple of days ago (after being offered an opportunity to play FDR at Nixon Library in Yorba Linda) I decided I should look up Jack Denton only to find on the internet that he died in 1986 at the age of 61.  [Yes, the real FDR also died in his early 60’s.]   His life in late 1985 could have been measured in days and weeks, and he wanted everything to be right, but without a dependence on the Lord.  When we remember we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, we will gain the right perspective that as strangers death is not an end, but merely a passage on the pilgrim’s journey.   But the key is how we handle the manual of life—the Bible—and the message of the Bible, forgiveness of sins and salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.