What does it mean to seek refuge? What internal line gets crossed before a person decides, “Enough is enough and something must change”?
War, poverty, crime, and illiteracy fight personal wars against people with hope, dreams, and hard-working hands. None of us has any idea what is happening behind the front doors of our neighbors’ houses. Unless we have been in a place of hopelessness, we have no idea what that internal struggle looks like or feels like, and we have no frame of reference for understanding the courage it must take to decide to move, to run, to get out… to seek refuge somewhere new.
When mothers finally find the courage to move, it can be frightening. Finding a safe place to go and a means of securing financial stability may not just feel impossible, it might actually be impossible.
What if a healthy father who loves his family can’t find a job to support them? He will do whatever it takes to keep them safe and fed, including moving far away from home.
People around the world have been on the move since the beginning of time. They have run from land battles, drought, corrupt rulers, religious fundamentalism, environmental disasters, and greed that systemically devastates populations more deeply than tsunamis or earthquakes.
On a daily basis, thousands of North Africans are risking their lives in tiny boats bound for Europe. Some are sent back by the authorities. Some make it to a new shore. Thousands are lost at sea. Men, women, and children whose lives are so hopeless will literally risk everything they know for a world they know very little about.
Thousands of people are fleeing north from Central America; many of them are children traveling alone. How bad does it have to be for a child to understand the need to flee? As a mother of two children, I have no way to comprehend this. I never will, but the act alone seems to speak the language of desperation.
When Syrian refugees flee an evil war that has a face and a name, we pray for them and hope the nearby countries and world governments will help them start again. We are happy to see pictures of caring Italian coast guards plucking North Africans out of the sea – but when Central Americans fleeing drug wars, violence, poverty and hopelessness come knocking, sometimes it is a different story.
Admittedly it is a complicated issue, but while our lawmakers and politicians wrestle with the immigration laws, people have come here.
Many of them have survived by clinging to the tops of trains, or escaping dehydration in a dusty desert. Some have not survived the voyage. Children have walked for miles and eaten very little on a long journey that no child should make alone in search of their families.
How is the church responding to our neighbors? How can we be a shelter for women trapped in abuse, children suffering from neglect, and refugees running for the hope of a better life somewhere new?
At Passport this summer, we learned to welcome our neighbor. We made little dolls at PASSPORTkids! to share with weary children who have arrived seeking refuge. Campers are collecting offerings to assist ministries in Texas, Virginia and Florida.
More importantly, we are considering how to be good neighbors, how to be more welcoming to the face that looks like it might be new to the neighborhood. Is there an easily learned word in a new language that means “hello” or “good afternoon?” We are asking “who is my neighbor?
We hope your youth and children brought home some new thoughts or ideas about how to welcome a stranger. The gospel of Jesus Christ is beautiful, simple and challenging. We just might start a fabulous revolution of love that offers hope to the hopeless and changes the way we all see the world. I sure hope so.
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Colleen Burroughs
Colleen Burroughs is the Vice-President of Passport, Inc and the founder of Watering Malawi.