As a son of Sweden, my eye was caught by Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emigrants, a 1951 novel of Swedish migration to America in the nineteenth century. He describes the landless, the debtbound, the discontented, the oppressed, confined to a centuries-old, unchanging pattern of life, hearing of a new land far away, a land opened invitingly for those who longed for a freedom denied them at home. They were stirred. Eventually, one-fourth of all Swedes in the world lived in America.
The emigrants knew little of the country awaiting them. They risked everything to get there. They were dismissed as daredevils by some back home. But their bold move, ridiculed by the unimaginative, with every appearance of foolhardiness, gained for them a larger cultivated land than their entire homeland.
The photograph above – Swedes entering this nation so long ago – is a picture of biblical faith. God calls every generation to retell this story of sacrifice and risk and movement for the sake of a better future. Starting a family, planting a church, writing a book, funding a seminary student, adopting a child – there are many ways to get up and leave the familiar and walk into the unknown for the sake of Christ, with no guarantees that it will go well. But “pressing on” is how we gain Him (Philippians 3:8-14). Venturing into newness, not knowing everything in advance but staking everything on the promises of God, is how we live by faith (Hebrews 11:8). Following the Lamb wherever He goes is how we show we are redeemed (Revelation 14:4).
How this plays out will entail many personal judgment calls, of course. But beneath all that, the basic choice is clear: playing it safe and staying put in order to minimize risk versus moving forward in faith even with losses along the way. Which one we choose reveals something profound about us.
