I haven't written in a while. You have probably noticed I tend to only write when God really places something on my heart. Lately, the Syrian refugee crisis has been weighing heavily on me. As I sit here, I am writing this from a comfy chair, where I feel completely, entirely, 100 percent safe. I sit here with my husband right across from me. I sit here with a huge television right in front of me and a computer sitting right on my lap and my smartphone laying right beside of me and a cup of coffee within my reach. I sit here beside of a window looking out at God's beautiful creation here in Southwest Virginia. I sit here, with the realization that right now I am only afraid of not being able to pick a good enough topic for my huge paper due at the end of the semester in my agricultural law class. I sit here with the realization that no matter what my problems morph into, they will never actually be "problems." This is because I sit here realizing that our brothers and sisters in the Middle East or trying to flee the Middle East can't sit in their homes enjoying a Friday evening. They can't enjoy safety and peace in their homes. They can't know what it feels like to only worry about a paper being due or a house remodel being finished because they are bearing the burden of having no home at all or having their homes and families destroyed by hatred and evil and senseless violence.
I realize that I am safe and they are not. I realize that they would probably give absolutely anything to just feel that way...safe. I realize there have been children born into this mess that hear that word in their native language and still have no clue what it means because they have never experienced it...safe...at peace...comfortable.
I realize that there is all this buzz around a picture of a father peeling his little baby boy off the sand on the shore of the sea because he is dead now after trying to escape the horror of his home. Merely trying to find safety and peace. How are we okay with this? How are we okay with the fact that he is dead and that we didn't help and aren't helping and maybe could've helped him? How is this okay?!
How is it okay that we are more concerned about politics and what we consider "corruption" in our government than we are with children, women, men, people just like us made is God's image dying and suffering and living through a type of hell on our planet that we will never comprehend because we are cozy in our homes and in our churches that we worship in freely? That sweet little boy will never know what it is like to walk into a church and raise his hands to heaven and feel peace. And all I can think is "could we have helped him have that opportunity?" Just so you know, his name was Aylan.
The statistics are scary. The last figure I read said we are up to a count of over 40 million refugees around the world and 8 million from the Middle East and something else I read called this the "worst humanitarian crisis since WWII." Our only solution is Jesus! The only way we can help is to die to ourselves. To sacrificially love and selflessly serve. To realize that people, whether they know Jesus or not, whether they believe like we do or not, whether we agree with them or not, are deeply, fiercely loved by our God. He loves them just as much as He loves us. He wants them just as much as He wants us. He has called us to protect the broken and abused, the poor and the needy, the hurt. He calls us to extend to them His AMAZING GRACE! I read something the other day that said something like, how can we sing about this amazing grace and never extend it to people who may be unlike us but are still created in the image and likeness of God. Wow...if that doesn't knock your breath out of you for a second, something is wrong. We have our priorities way, way out of line.
Matthew 25:40 says, "And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.'" We do it for Jesus. When we love these people and pray for these people and extend our help to these people, we are extending ourselves to Jesus. That is the bottom line. When we drop the political agendas and the desire to be right all of the time and we choose love instead, we do that for Jesus. When we open our homes and extend our hands and maybe even reach for our wallets...We do that for Jesus.
So today, as I sit here in my comfy chair and you probably do too while you are reading this, I pray that God breaks our hearts. That he shows us how we have it wrong and how we can fix it. I pray that God shows us how to re-prioritize and how to sacrificially love and help and serve. I pray that God continues to give us an abundance of grace that we don't deserve and teaches us to share it with ALL people. I pray that this shakes us, stirs us, and makes us die to ourselves. I pray that God shows us exactly what to do to help.
If you want to help there are countless ways too. Just a few sites that you can donate through are Unicef, World Relief, World Vision, Doctors Without Borders, Samaritan's Purse, there are many, many more. Just google it.
The biggest thing you and I can do is pray. God will tell us what to do from there, I firmly believe that. I didn't grow up in a place where there was a lot of emphasis on missionary work or helping people outside of our own region but God is stirring my heart in an unforgettable kind of way, so I am learning along with you.
Let's make a difference together and get our priorities straight.
-Emily
