I Do Not Like Where We Live

You have never said it in front of the children and you are fairly sure they know anyway.

It is in how you walk through it. Quickly, with a purpose, eyes forward, from the door to wherever you are going and back. It is in the way you say the name of the street to other people. It is in what you do not point at.

And underneath it there is something you would find hard to say out loud, which is that you do not want them to be from here.

You want them to pass through, and go somewhere else, and be people who once lived on this road rather than people who are of it.

I am not going to argue with your assessment of the street. I do not know it. What I want to look at is what walking through a place quickly actually teaches, because I think it is the opposite of what you intend.

Seek the peace of the city

There is an instruction in Jeremiah given to people in a place none of them chose and all of them hated.

And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the LORD for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. (Jeremiah 29:7, King James Version)

Seek the peace of the city.

Look at the situation before you look at the instruction. These are exiles. This is not their city, they did not choose it, they are there against their will, and the letter does not pretend otherwise. It says whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, plainly, in the same sentence.

You are not being told to like it, and it was never required that you approve of a place before living well in it. Jeremiah 29:7 names the captivity in the same breath as the instruction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as realism rather than as being told to be grateful.

And then look at the reason given. For in the peace thereof shall ye have peace. It is not a moral appeal. It is a statement about how connected a household is to the ground it stands on, whether or not it wants to be.

You have a family whose peace is tied to this street already, and it was never a choice about whether to be connected to it. The written word ties the welfare of the people to the welfare of the place without asking anybody's opinion of it, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a practical fact rather than a sentence of resignation.

What walking through quickly teaches

Now the part I most want you to hear, because it concerns what your children are actually learning.

A child learns where they are from by how their parent moves through it.

Walk a street quickly, eyes forward, greeting nobody, and a child learns: this is a place to get through. Walk it slowly, stopping, saying hello to somebody at a gate, and a child learns: these are our streets and those are our neighbors. The first one has been taught here on purpose, in order to protect them.

But it does not produce a child destined for elsewhere. It produces a child who is from nowhere, and a child from nowhere carries that a long way past this address.

You are not producing somebody bound for better things by hurrying them, and it was never possible to hand a child no roots as a kindness. Jeremiah 29:7 ties a household's peace to the ground under it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a mother what a fast walk teaches. A place a family walks through is a place they belong to, and belonging to a street is not the same as being stuck on it.

You are not protecting them by hurrying, and it was never possible to give a child no roots as a kindness. Jeremiah 29 sends people to seek the good of a place they hated because their own good was inside it, which is exactly why the Spirit of God moves a mother to slow down rather than to move away.

And the ambition is not the problem. Wanting more for them is right and it is yours to want. It is simply that belonging somewhere is not the thing that keeps a person there. Usually it is the thing that lets them go.

Walk it slowly and greet one person

Here is the practical part, and it has two halves.

Walk your own street with them for twenty minutes, slowly, not on the way to anything.

You are able to walk a place without being on your way through it, and it has never once been the same as approving of everything about it. The passage sends people to seek the peace of a city they did not choose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman walking her own road at half her usual speed.

And then the second half, which is the one that does the work: greet one person by name.

Anybody. The woman at the corner. The man who is always outside. Say their name out loud in front of your children.

That single act does more than any amount of slow walking, because it turns a street from a set of buildings into a place with people in it who know you, and a child who hears their mother greet a neighbor by name has just learned that this is somewhere with people in it.

You are able to change what a street is with one name, and it has never once required you to like the buildings. Jeremiah 29:7 ties a household's peace to the peace of the place they are standing in, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a woman says a neighbor's name out loud.