Perfect Strangers

I was once in a community where a lady told me that people there were either from ‘around here’ or from ‘off’. She said she had moved there 30 years before but people still said she was from ’off’.

It can be hard for an outsider to be accepted in a place. Sometimes that's because of the closed-off nature of the community and other times it's because the new person chooses to stay distant.

For the Christan, we are called to be ‘off’. In 1^st Peter 2:11-12 we read: “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.”

Here we are called to be strangers to the world, not as unknown but as those that live differently. We are to be known enough that they see our behavior but separate enough that see the difference. Christians are not called to pack up and leave town but rather to stand as a beacon of light in dark places.

Many times, for acceptance’s sake we will conform to wickedness in order to get along. We must, however, be willing to stand apart from the crowd in righteousness. It may make us strange to the world but it will also make us a friend with God.

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Ecclesiastes 12:10

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