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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Motels and Hotels

motels & hotels

“We are meant to be where we are, but where we are is not where we are meant to be.”

Genesis 46 revealed our parallels to Joseph as sojourners and wanderers, here for a time, purposefully here, but passing through and headed to the Promised Land.

I was reminded of a song by the Lumineers called “Sleep on the Floor”. The whole song is a romantic call to the songwriter’s companion to abandon all that she knows and follow him on a whim wherever he goes. The song has multiple refrains, each one directing his lover to allow him to be her home and her adventure.

“Pack yourself a toothbrush, dear,
Pack yourself a favorite blouse,
Take a withdrawal slip,
Take all of your savings out,
‘Cause if we don’t leave this town,
We might never make it out.”

Throughout the song, the songwriter becomes more desperate in his pleas, eventually asking her to decide on him, even if the sun doesn’t shine, bridges break, and the subway floods. The songs also alludes to her chance at independence if she leaves her current life behind, especially leaving her parents.

The morals in the song are not sound or admirable, but the underlying theme of not getting too comfortable in one place, living in the moment, and knowing there’s greater things ahead is partially the mindset Josh wanted us to grasp from Genesis 46. We’re facing that “Now and Not Yet” tension again, and he illustrated it perfectly through the examples of motels and hotels.

It’s always easy for me to recognize that I am meant for more, meant for the Promised Land / Heaven / Eternity with Christ, when I’m living life in the motel. The ramshackle lodge of life is lacking the amenities, the comfort, the glamour, the splendor; and right in those moments when those things are stripped away, I seem to grab hold of the hope that it’s temporary and there’s something better coming. My eternal perspective is close at hand.

Of course it’s good to maintain an eternal perspective, but then I also seem to lack the ability to enjoy where I’ve been placed. My focus is so fixated on the fact that the motel life is temporary that I begin to hate it and have no perspective for the needs surrounding me, or the sharing of the eternal with others.

Then, when I live the fancy hotel life, I lose sight of the eternal. I become so wrapped up in the luxury and comforts of that life that I forget that this is only temporary, and not all I should be living for.

I will always struggle with a balanced perspective of knowing that eternity is coming but that I am purposed for the here and now. This is where the now and not yet tension exists. But when I recognize that the journey to the Promised Land is way better when I’m not journeying alone, then I’m able to sit in that tension. That is the crossroads for my ability to look forward to eternity, maintaining my eternal perspective, while also doing all that I can in the here and now to bring my brothers (and sisters) along with me, just as Joseph did.

~Emily Spare