As We Suffered in the Heat...

Tough week this week, huh? What with the heat sending us scrambling for the library or movie theater or other air conditioned-enterprises because home relaxation was impossible and sleep uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, here's what you weren't doing. You weren't slogging across Hungary, trying to evade a razor-wire boundary with Serbia, in the rain, pushing your child onto a train. You weren't coming to grips with the fact that the new refugee camp you live in might become your permanent home, and that you might never go back to life as it was.

A news report I saw this week showed what a lot of refugees who had set out from Turkey were doing the moment they reached the Greek island of Lesbos: they were pulling out their cell phones, texting friends and relatives back where they came from, that they were safe.

Texting relatives? The imagery seems a little bit out of place. Aren't refugees poor, and desperate, and homeless? Aren't they dirty, and sick, and hungry? They are all of those things, at times, but the reality is more complex. The images of them pulling out smart phones jarred me, because it underscored for me something that's been hard to get my mind around: they're not that different from me and you.

That's one piece of a larger mosaic of disbelief in my mind that's been forming. Since I heard about the beheading of Iraqi and Syrian Christians, I was at the same time drawn to the story, and distanced from it. Again and again, as I have plodded through first-world daily concerns, I have struggled to reconcile the fact that we and they live in the same world. The brutality reported seems almost medieval. But it's not. It's today. Young girls being raped as prizes of conquest. Teenage boys and men being marched off and systematically executed. Christians being compelled to renounce their faith as they stare down the barrel of a rifle.

And now...In other news, Apple debuted the iPhone 6s today.

How is this happening, all in the same world? How is it REALLY happening? For some reason, Afghanistan seemed a world away. Iraq and Syria did, too - until recent images of refugees fleeing border police and storming trains in Europe caught my attention, suggesting as they do that this is coming closer and closer to our doorstep (and shame on me that it took this long ).

Is this "count your blessings" blog post? Maybe. But it's more. It's a call for us to consider that this isn't happening over there...but in our world, today. That thought blows my mind. If we wait to care until the "problem" hits our own shores and truly inconveniences us, we won't be objective about it. I won't be.

In light of the fact that these are fellow human beings, made in the image of God, what does God expect of me? I honestly don't know. But I do know this: deliberate ignorance isn't an option. I know that in the last 4 years, while I have gotten married, finished seminary, and taken on a new role at my church, Syria and the region around it has been descending into hell. And I know that Jesus entered humanity and suffered with them, as surely as he suffered with us.

Pray for the children. It may sound trite, but war is hugely disrupting to a nation. Think of all the social institutions you rely on now, when your kids are young, that help outfit them for the future: schools, clinics, parks, rec programs, churches. Now imagine them closing for four years. What would you do? How easily could you arrange alternatives, especially if at the same time you were displaced from your home, having to find work, shelter, and daily food?

Remember the desperate situation of people during Hurricane Katrina? Remember what they were called? That's right - refugees. And some lost their homes, but rebuilt. Even after 10 years, things are not "normal" in New Orleans.

And that was water. Syria is war. There is ongoing destruction and displacement. Once it ends, it will take years to resume "normal".

I know some people have looked at what's unfolding in Europe, shrugged and said, "Well, they chose to leave." I can accept that adults might choose where to live, but under no amount of tortured logic can children be held responsible. They are truly innocents, and their innocence is being stolen from them. They will never get those childhoods back.

I need to reckon with the fact that all of this is unfolding on the other side of a world I inhabit. Join me.