Strangers No More
This morning at church I accompanied a song that took me right back to 1998. I have many memories associated with various hymns, so I wrote a collection of vignettes for a church music class I took last year. Following is one of those stories, and I have added a few bracketed details so it makes sense to my non-Mennonite blog readers.
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During my sophomore year of college, my friend Heidi and I “Mennonited Our Way” through the Southeast for spring break. We mapped out a preliminary route, consulted the “Mennonite Your Way” directory [a listing of Mennonites across the U.S. who are willing to host overnight guests in their home for a small fee], sent letters and made phone calls, thanked Heidi’s dad for his gas card, and headed off to visit a variety of strangers (as well as a few relatives). Since I was only 18 years old, my mom wisely suggested that I call home every few days while we were traveling to let them know we were OK.
As indicated on our itinerary, Heidi and I planned to spend our final night in the mountains of western North Carolina. Night had already fallen as we wound our way up the curving mountain roads, marveling at the fact that we no longer had any radio reception. Since it was 1998, neither of us had a cell phone, but we had made prior arrangements to meet our hosts at a fast food restaurant and then follow them the final distance to their home. As we waited in the parking lot, Heidi and I were glad to see a car pull in with a license plate reading “606.” [This is the number of the most popular hymn in the old Mennonite Hymnal -- "Praise God from Whom."]
Orpah hopped out and introduced herself to us; we would meet her husband Elam when we got to their house. As Heidi and I hauled our duffel bags into their home a few minutes later, Elam was sitting at his organ playing a hymn he had selected for this very occasion — “For We are Strangers No More.”
I had never heard the song before, but Elam announced that he was playing a special song for us and happily explained the reason. A few minutes earlier, after Orpah had already left to meet us at the restaurant, my mother had called their home to see if we had arrived yet… and Elam decided to play the Mennonite game [think Six Degrees of Mennonites]. Through the course of our visit, Heidi and I also discovered that Elam and Orpah were the great uncle and aunt of our friend Christopher. Six years later, through my work, I got to know two of Elam and Orpah’s college-age grandchildren, Amanda and Conrad.
For we are strangers no more, but members of one family;
strangers no more, but part of one humanity;
strangers no more, we’re neighbors to each other now;
strangers no more, we’re sisters and we’re brothers now.
