As a Christian

I came across the following as I read on the way back from a Le Moulin outing to Amiens (pictures to follow at some point). It comes from an Epistle to Diognetus, a respected pagan some speculate may have been a Greek emperor in the 1st century:

Christians do not distinguish themselves from others by their country, their language or their dress.
They do not belong to any particular city, they do not make use of special dialects, their way of life has nothing particular about it.
They do not set themselves up, as many others do, as champions of a human doctrine.
They do not distribute themselves in Greek or barbaric cities according to pre-arranged divisions.
They conform to local customs as regards clothes, food and life-style while bearing witness to the extraordinary and truly paradoxical laws of the spiritual republic to which they belong.
They live each in their own country but like strangers in the house.
They fulfill all their duties as citizens, and put up with all their tasks, but like strangers.
Every strange land is their country and every country is for them a strange land.
In the same way they are in the flesh but they do not live according to the flesh.

And so we find that as citizens of the city of Zion to come, we are particularly crafted in our being and faith to be the most mobile of human creatures. Our attachments to "home," land, and nation rank far below second place as we hear the call to go and make disciples and go and love our neighbors, those who become our neighbors. We see too that within enclaves composed of ourselves, "the paradoxical laws of the spiritual republic" lose meaning and indeed, lose existence. So we find it strange to return home. We find it unsettling to speak only of "Christian" subjects in "Christian" settings--thus Gospel, justice, love, and grace should once and always be on the tips of our tongues and in the reach of our hands in how we live and for what our blood courses. And we find that a place and people can become in many senses as our own, adopted through our citizenship which claims the globe and our loyalties which disregard all that would keep us nationally and spiritually secure.