We Are the Foreigners

By: Scott Armstrong

Reading: Exodus 22:16-27

Key Verse: “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless” (Exod. 22:21-22).

Taking language classes four hours a day, four days a week.

Having a severely sick baby, and not knowing how to tell foreign physicians what is wrong with him.

Spending nine hours in line at an immigration office with no air conditioning, only for the person at the tiny window to say you lack one final document, added today to the list of requirements.

All these and more are real, and they have happened to my wife and me.  We are foreigners.

For the last eighteen years we have served as missionaries, living in five different countries.  Cross-cultural living is our passion, but it can be exhausting and fear-inducing at times.

Thank God for the patient friend who allowed us to babble like three-year-olds as we butchered the language early on.

Or for the pastor who spent two days with us shopping for a reliable car.

Or for the three church members who visited our infant son when he was near death and laid hands on him and prayed. (Our boy was completely healed within 12 hours.)

I have a special place in my heart for foreigners.  I am one.

How can you love and assist a foreigner this week? Let us, too, remember that we once were foreigners in Egypt.