I’ve been learning about
attachments. As you know, the Word promises that the Lord will never
forsake me (Hebrews 13:5), but feelings of being rootless and
unwelcome, a stranger in the land have persisted throughout my life.
Now there are lots of reasons why I feel the way I do: Obviously, I
have attachment issues with my parents that affect my attachment to
the Lord and to others. I am working on that and will talk more
about that as I get those things settled, but this morning, the Lord
impressed me with a generational reason why I feel detached and
rootless.
My mother is the daughter of immigrants who never felt welcome here
in America. They were despised and rejected by the natives who were
themselves descendants of recent immigrants.
“You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the
feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the
land of Egypt.” Exodus
23:9
My point is this: Science shows that information flows from mother
to child through the eye gate. This is one primary way that
generational blessings and curses are transferred. My grandmother
and grandfather desperately wanted to fit in here in America, so
much so that they did not allow my mom to speak Italian, which meant
she could not communicate with her own father! My Grandfather never
learned to speak English.
Mix that anxious longing for acceptance with the rejection of their
new community, and I think you arrive at a persistent sense of not
belonging. The name calling, the rude treatment, the open hostility
make it very obvious why you feel unwelcome.
So how does that look when it is passed down to the following
generations?
You lose the reason why you don’t feel comfortably attached to the
land or your community; you just experience a persistent, yet vague,
sense of not belonging along with an anxious need to belong.
Depending on your personal tendencies that will result in anxious
attachment or dismissive attachment to your home and community;
either way, you will feel like you don’t belong here. Wherever here
is.
If you stop to listen, you might hear your heart painfully asking,
“What am I doing here, Lord? Why do I feel so out of place?”
(Please see note below.)
Here’s another example of circumstances that can result in
attachment problems with land, place and community. A year or so
back, the Pool provided the prayer room for a youth outreach. We
prayed with a young man of African-American descent whose family was
haunted by depression and failure, addictions and problems with the
law. As we prayed, I received a vision of his early ancestors being
torn from their beloved homeland and shipped to America
as slaves. What struck me as odd was the sense that his ancestors
were not as distressed by being forced into slavery as they were by
being torn from their land. Imagine how such a deep attachment wound
is transmitted to the next generation and the next and the next.
Maybe it feels like this: We have lost our place and our home. We
can never return. What we love the most can never be ours again. We
will always be strangers here. We don’t belong here. This is not
our home.
Think of the aching agony that is transmitted from parent to child.
And remember that the reason for the pain, the loss, the
rootlessness is forgotten.
Here’s the truth
The earth is the Lord’s and He is the one who ordained all of our
days here on the earth. We are actually created from the dust of the
earth. We are meant to feel like we belong here in the earth. I’m
not talking about being a part of the world system or part of the
kingdom of darkness, but we are supposed to be here in the earth at
this time. This is where we are supposed to be.
Here’s something else to consider. Since the Lord formed our bodies
from the dust of the earth, feeling detached from the land will
cause us to feel detached from our own bodies. You know the enemy
likes that one.
God put us here
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our
likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and
over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Genesis 1: 26
God created our bodies from the earth
Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living being. Genesis 2:7
Our time here is ordained by God
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were
all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there
was not one of them. Psalm 139:16
Let’s take it up a notch. Mix that lack of welcome into a community
with the pervasive sense of rejection that is a consequence of
generational sin and our own personal sin, then add in a family that
does not welcome you.
Community rejection
God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will
be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be
enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.” Genesis 15:13
The consequences of generational and personal sin
“Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground;
and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a
wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Genesis
4:14
Family rejection
“Those who live in my house and my maids consider me a stranger.
I am a foreigner in their sight.” Job
19:15
What do you get when you stir all the ingredients together? You get
pain-filled attachment issues that cannot be completely resolved
because they include, along with the obvious, a lost attachment to
the land, place and community. Essentially, we don’t feel welcome
here and we don’t know why.
Here’s the prayer.
Lord God, please forgive me and my ancestors for believing the lie
that we should not be here, that we are not welcome here, that we do
not belong here on the earth. You put us here and ordained our days
here. Regardless of the reaction of our communities, the sin of our
ancestors, our personal sin and the rejection of our families, the
earth is our home during this present age.
Lord, I choose to be here, properly attached to the earth for as
long as you have ordained. Please cleanse and heal all my attachment
circuits so that I can be safely and securely attached to the earth
by You. Amen
Simply praying a prayer like this one brought peace to me in a new
way. I pray that it will do the same for you. (Be sure to read the
note at the bottom.)
Here’s a few more scriptures
“There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the
stranger as well as the native, for I am the LORD your God.”
Leviticus 24:22
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native
among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens
in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.” Leviticus 19:34
Note: I realize that the Word mentions living as strangers and
aliens in the earth in Hebrews 11:13 as if that is a good thing. I
believe that passage is describing our attitude while living here.
We are to set our minds on the age to come in order to endure this
present evil age. In another words, life on earth is not the
beginning and end of me. I am here to accomplish a greater purpose
that will be fulfilled as eternity unfolds. But developing an
eternal mindset is not the subject of this discussion.
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