Stepping into the Light

Bloggers Unite has asked bloggers to post something today to bring attention to the 8.4 million refugees worldwide and the 12.4 million additional people who are not officially refugees because they have been displaced within their own countries. Nearly half of the world’s uprooted people are of five nationalities: Afghan, Columbian, Iraqi, Sudanese, and Somali. Half of these uprooted people are children.

Just last week it occurred to me that my childhood was one I’d describe as idyllic. No perfect childhood exists except in really bad fiction, and my family like all others was not without its several forms of dysfunction. Every day that I live, however, I’m a little more grateful for a socially, emotionally, psychologically, and sexually sheltered upbringing, secure in the love of two parents, in a safe home, in a peaceful place and time. Our neighbors left their doors unlocked at night, even wide open on summer nights. Children past age 3 or 4 or 5 were free to wander outdoors and come back home again.

As a child I slept so peacefully that up until college I remembered every night’s dreams the next morning and often woke up laughing. I had three nightmares in my entire first 18 years. In one, someone tried to kill my father (and I fought off the attacker with the help of two kids from the neighborhood); in another I was chased by a bear. In the third nightmare―which became a recurring dream later in life―I found myself in a part of town that I rarely visited. The dream never revealed how I got there. The only landmark I recognized was a local clock tower, but I had no idea how to get home from there, and was afraid to ask strangers. I walked and walked with no sense of direction and kept returning to the proximity of that clock tower. Finally, at the point of exhaustion, I reached a street that looked like the one where I lived but when I arrived at the spot where my home should have been it was gone. Where were my mother, father and brothers? I woke up.

There is no way I can relate to a refugee; probably neither can you. To me, when Jesus talked about "the least of these" He meant people to whom I can’t relate. I don’t believe He meant necessarily the poor, or the addled, or the lame, or the particularly sinful. Jesus wanted all of us to be good to "the least of these" and if I or someone close to me is lame, for example, then the lame are not "the least of these" in my eyes. I’ve been close enough to poverty to relate to the poor and can be easily moved to try to help ease poverty or hunger. I’ve known the fear of joining the homeless. But to have no nation, no visibly viable future, no recourse, and maybe even to be separated from the family who loves you through all this? How can I relate? That makes refugees "the least of these" for me because it’s almost as if they don’t exist. Only rarely and fleetingly do I see them on television―are they not sexy enough to get ratings unless Angelina Jolie (God bless her) visits them?

Jesus promised to tell each of us on our day of judgment, "I assure you, when you did it to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me" (Matt 25:40, NLT) or "when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me" (Matt 25:45, NLT). He wants me to treat "the least of these" as I would treat Him and He said that I should love Him with all my heart, my entire mind, soul and all my strength (Mark 12:30). The first step to love is an introduction. Start here.