nomad noun a member of a people who have no permanent home but move about according to the seasons
nomadic adjective mobile, nomadic, peregrine, roving, wandering (of groups of people) tending to travel and change settlements
frequently; "a restless mobile society"; "the nomadic habits of the
Bedouins"; "believed the profession of a peregrine typist would have a
happy future"; "wandering tribes"
A few years ago, I randomly (I thought) chose the screen name
'wanderingnomad.' It stuck in my head, and now comes back again and
again. Every time I hear the word it sends a shiver down my spine.
People who write their addresses in pencil... mobile like the wind... slaves of the hurting and the dirty and the dying... that's what I long for - for me, for us. Not to be anchored in a place or gelled into a cultural box, not to be fixed into a social hierarchy or cemented into stasis by time, money and commitments, but FREE to move as God speaks.
A people who belong to the nations. A church without walls. Walking
into dangerous places and 'the valley of the shadow of death' but not
fearing evil because God is with us. Leaving our loved ones and taking
up our cross to follow him because He is worth it...
I hear stories of the bedouins, of Afghan nomads and Somalian tribesand I like to dream one day I'll be there, listening to them tell their stories. I am not sure but I think that I will never have a permanent home. A nomadic mssion maybe - I think some of us are going to go back from Bristol with refugees from all over the world to their homelands, and gateway cities thousands of miles apart are going to be opened up by this international traffic.
But most of all my dream is that we, our generation would let the nomadic, cross cultural 'restless and mobile' spirit of God infect us
to 'move about according to the seasons' ourselves.
In the beginning he chose a nomadic people; God chose a nomad without roots or hope or a future, and he gave him and his descendants a Name and an inheritance. All Abraham had to do was to listen to God, obey him, and GO, and God used him mightily to bless the world. Now he's calling us again, as he has through every generation, to stand up and be counted as his people, his nation; to be ready to move and leave all that we know, for the sake of being a light to the generations to come and the nations of the world. Same mission;new generation.
