No Longer Strangers
Ephesians 2:19 · Romans 5:2 (NIV)
In 1935, Black linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner recorded Louisiana Creole speakers on aluminum discs. Black doctors in New Orleans helped him find participants and offered their offices as trusted places to record.
The discs were preserved and digitized by Indiana University’s Archives of Traditional Music. The University of Cambridge reported this week that Dr. Oliver Mayeux had uncovered and studied them.
Among the voices are Odelia Edmond, who told stories of New Orleans life, and George Doyle, a civic leader and former Black police officer. Many participants were born deep in the nineteenth century. The recordings preserve the New Orleans variety of Creole, which disappeared from the city by the 1950s. Only a few thousand native speakers of Louisiana Creole remain today, though younger people are working to revive it.
Ninety-one years later, those voices can be heard again. Somebody recorded them. Somebody preserved the discs.
GOD's own record is far better.
Psalm 87, written by the Sons of Korah, worship leaders in ancient Israel, celebrates Jerusalem as GOD's city. Then it does something surprising. GOD lists the nations that were once Israel's enemies, Egypt and Babylon and Philistia, and enrolls them as citizens. "The Lord will write in the register of the peoples: 'This one was born in Zion'" (Psalm 87:6).
Outsiders written into the city's register. Strangers given a birthplace in Zion.
The apostle Paul, an early church leader who wrote much of the New Testament, wrote to believers in Ephesus, a city in what is now Turkey. Most of them were not Jewish. They had grown up far from the promises of Israel. Paul told them, "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ" (Ephesians 2:13).
Then he gave them a new identity. "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household" (Ephesians 2:19).
Members of his household. Paul describes Jews and Gentiles reconciled to GOD and to one another through CHRIST. Their belonging is a gift of grace, received through faith, not a status they earn.
We come to GOD through CHRIST, trusting HIS welcome rather than trying to earn it.
Paul wrote the same to the believers in Rome. "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand" (Romans 5:1-2).
Access is the key word. A visitor waits at the front door and hopes to be noticed. A member of the household walks right in. JESUS opened that door for us, and HE did it at the cross.
A careless sentence can become a standard we use to judge ourselves for years. But another person’s verdict does not define our place in GOD’s household.
The world hands out measuring sticks. GOD writes names in a register.
A bishop named Irenaeus led the church in Lyon, in what is now France, around AD 180. In Against Heresies, Book IV, chapter 9, he wrote about a saying of JESUS. "Every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old" (Matthew 13:52). Irenaeus said, "But one and the same householder produced both covenants." He also wrote that the Father "always has more to measure out."
The world's measuring sticks shrink people. GOD measures out grace.
Tomorrow the church marks All Saints' Day. We give thanks for believers in every century whose names GOD has written down. Many of them were once far away. All of them were brought near by JESUS. Even Heman, who wrote the dark lament of Psalm 88, began with faith. "Lord, you are the God who saves me" (Psalm 88:1). His voice is in GOD's register too.
It does leave me thinking about how many voices GOD has preserved that the world forgot, and how mine is somewhere in that register too.
I am not here to prove myself. I am here to make HIM visible.
🙏 To the one who feels like an outsider, you are a member of HIS household.
🙏 To the one holding an old measuring stick, GOD measures out grace.
🙏 To the one afraid to approach, JESUS has already made the way.
🙏 To the one who feels forgotten, the LORD writes your name in HIS register.
Grace and Peace.