Some children can list their addresses the way others list their cousins. The two rooms behind Grandma’s shop. The flat above the barber in Spanish Town. The yard in Portmore with the mango tree. Then a council flat in Leeds, a house-share in Brixton, a basement in Brampton. Every move had its reason: work, rent, a relationship, a chance of something better. Some were chosen. Many were not. By the time such a child is grown, “home” may feel less like a place and more like a suitcase that has never been fully unpacked.
If that is your family’s story, Psalm 107 was written with you in mind.
The wanderers
The psalm opens with a call: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so” (Psalm 107:2). It then tells the stories of four groups of people God rescued. The first are wanderers:
“Some wandered in desert wastelands, finding no way to a city where they could settle. They were hungry and thirsty, and their lives ebbed away. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way to a city where they could settle.” (Psalm 107:4–7, NIV)
Notice what they are looking for. Not riches, not a palace, but a city where they could settle. A place to stop. A place where the children can stay at one school, where you know which neighbour to ask for a cup of sugar, where your name is on something. That longing is ancient, and God takes it seriously enough to put it in his hymn book.
The psalm also names the cost of wandering honestly. “Their lives ebbed away.” Constant moving wears people down. Every new place means new bills, new deposits, new schools, new churches and the slow work of being known again. It is not a small thing.
Say so
“Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” The psalmist does not ask the rescued simply to feel grateful. He asks them to speak. Four times, after each rescue, the refrain comes back: “Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind” (Psalm 107:8, 15, 21, 31).
For families that have moved often, saying so is important, because the story of those moves is often told in only one key: loss. We remember the flat we were evicted from, the landlord who kept the deposit, the town where nobody spoke to us. Those memories are real. But if we only tell those stories, our children inherit the wandering without the rescue.
Saying so might mean telling the other half too. The stranger at the church who found us a room. The landlady who let us pay late the winter Daddy lost his job. The day the keys to this place, finally ours or finally stable, were put in our hands. It might mean writing the addresses down, with one thing God did at each one, and reading the list together at Christmas.
Not every wandering has ended
Some who read this are still moving. The tenancy ends next spring. The job may require another city. Psalm 107 does not pretend otherwise; it is a psalm sung by people who remember wandering because they have lived it. What it offers is the assurance that crying out in the desert is heard, and that God knows the way to a city even when we cannot see it.
Meanwhile, there are ways to settle a little even in a temporary place: hanging the pictures instead of leaving them in the box, planting something in a pot, joining a church rather than visiting, learning the names of the family next door. Settling is partly an address and partly a decision to be present where you are.
For those who have settled
If you have found your “city” — a home you own, a tenancy you can count on, a street where you belong — the psalm has a word for you too. Remember the wandering. Later in the same psalm, God “makes deserts into pools of water” and brings the hungry to live there, where “they founded a city where they could settle” (Psalm 107:35–36). The settled ones in Scripture are always called to make room for the next wanderers: the new family at church, the young nurse who has just arrived from Kingston, the relative who needs somewhere for a month.
For reflection
- How many places has your family called home? What did God do at each one?
- Which part of your story have you told most often: the loss, or the rescue?
- Who near you is still wandering, and how might you help them settle?
A prayer: Lord, you know every address we have had and every tear we cried moving between them. Thank you for leading us by a straight way when we could see no way at all. Help us to say so, and to tell our children the whole story. And make our home, wherever it is, a place where other wanderers can rest. Amen.
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