God's Guest on Earth

I am a sojourner on earth; do not hide your commandments from me!—Psalm 119:19

When God's Word fell upon me for the first time, it made me into a sojourner on this earth. It put me in a long line of fathers of the faith who lived as strangers in the promised land (Hebrews 11:9).

Abraham believed the call bidding him to go out of his homeland into the land of promise, and he acquired it at an advanced age, after the death of Sarah, "as a stranger," and as a person without full rights in this country. Jacob confessed before Pharaoh that his whole life had been a pilgrimage, even shorter and worse than the pilgrimage of his fathers Isaac and Abraham (Genesis 47:9).

When the children of Abraham took firm possession of the land of Canaan, they never were allowed to forget that they, too, were once strangers and still were. They were strangers in Egypt (Exodus 22:20), and to this day they are still "strangers and sojourners" in the land that doesn't belong to them, but to God (Leviticus 25:23). In a great and solemn hour of his life, David joined together with his father in declaring: "We are strangers and sojourners in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding" (1 Chronicles 29:15).

I am a sojourner on the earth. By saying that, I acknowledge I cannot stay here, and my time is short. Furthermore I don't have any claim to possessions or a home. I must gratefully receive all good things that are given to me. However, I must suffer injustice and violence without anyone standing up for me. I find firm support neither in people nor in things. As a sojourner I am subject to the laws of my refuge.

The earth that nourishes me has a right to my labor and my strength. I have no right to scorn the earth on which I earn my livelihood. I owe it faithfulness and gratitude. I must not elude my destiny of having to be an alien and stranger, and thus God's calling to this pilgrimage, by dreaming away my earthly life thinking about heaven. There is a very godless homesickness for the other world which is certainly not granted a homecoming.

I am called to be a guest, with everything that includes. I should not possibly close my heart to the tasks, pains, and joys of the earth. I should wait patiently for the divine promise to be kept, but really wait and not deprive myself of it in advance by indulging in wishes and dreams. Not one word is said here about home itself. I know that it cannot be this earth, but I also know that the earth is God's and I am not only a guest of earth, but also God's pilgrim and tenant on this earth (Psalm 39:13).

However, because I am nothing but a guest on earth without rights, without support, without security, because God himself has made me so weak and lowly, he has given me only one solid pledge for my goal: his Word. He will not deprive me of this one certainty. He will keep this Word for me and let me feel his power in it. I will find my way around in the far country where the Word from home is with me. In the wrong I will find my right; in uncertainty, my stability; in work, my strength; in suffering, patience.

"Do not hide your commandments from me." That is the prayer of the pilgrim in the far country.

For the person who has become a stranger on earth in accordance with God's will and call, there is in fact only one thought able to fill him with deep fear—one day no longer recognizing God's will and no longer knowing what God demands of him. It is true that God is often hidden from us in our personal conduct or in his historical action; that is not what is frightening. But it is an oppressive trial and temptation for us when the clear command of God becomes so obscure to us that we no longer discern from the Word of God what we should do.

In the midst of the joyous certainty of God's commands, this fear seizes us: what if one day God wanted to hide his commandments from me? I would fall into nothingness. I would surely collapse on taking my first step; in the far country I would surely perish. Or (now I have to ask myself this hard question, too) do I by any chance already live off the skeleton of my own principles to such a great extent that I would perhaps no longer even notice if one day God took his living command away from me? Perhaps even then I would act true to my principles as I had in the past, but God's command would no longer be with me.

God's command is God's personal word addressed to me for my life today. To be sure, it is not this today and that tomorrow that God wants from me. God's command is one with himself. But the decisive difference is whether I obey God or my principles. If I have enough of my own principles, I cannot understand the prayer of the psalmist.

However, when I let God himself show me the way, I am totally devoted to the grace revealed or denied to me, and, at every word I receive from the mouth of God, I tremble for the next word and for preservation in grace. Thus I stay committed to grace in all my ways and decisions, and no false security can cheat me out of living fellowship with God.

The cry that God may not hide his command from me comes only from the heart of the person who personally knows God's commands. We have no excuse; we can't act as if we didn't know God's will. God does not let us live in insoluble conflicts. He doesn't make our lives into ethical tragedies; rather he enables us to know his will; he demands compliance with it and punishes disobedience.

Things are much simpler here than we like to admit. Our predicament is not that we don't know God's commands, but that we don't do them and gradually no longer even recognize them, as a consequence of such disobedience. The psalmist does not say here that God hides his commands from us, rather he implores God in his mercy not to hide his commands. God in his freedom and wisdom has the right to withhold the grace of his commandments from us, but then there can be no resignation on our part, but only the urgent and persistent prayer: Do not hide your commandments from me.

Gesammelte Schriften, Volume IV
excerpt from "Meditations on Psalm 119"

Daniel Bloesch was pastor of the Community Church, Round Lake, Illinois when this article appeared. This Bonhoeffer material had not previously been available in English when it appeared.