Across The Street: Making A Global Impact In Your NeighborhoodSample

A world crisis continues to escalate. Millions of people flee war, persecution, and violence in their home countries. The number of people on the run from violence in the world today is staggering—and only getting worse. Sixty-five million people, a population greater than all of France, lived forcibly displaced from their homes as of 2015—a number twice as high as ten years before. Distressingly, children make up 50 percent of these numbers, with thousands arriving in their host countries without an adult. One out of every 113 people on the planet live as internally displaced persons (those fleeing within their own borders) or refugees (those fleeing outside their borders, qualifying for refugee status).*

The Old Testament is full of stories of God’s people also in desperate circumstances. Many cried out to God for help. In turn, God called them to come home to him. But displaced people and refugees fleeing in our time come from countries that are majority Muslim, Buddhist, or formerly Communist. They don’t have a history of knowing the love of God, or the call to come back him.

And the need is great and growing. Who will step up to meet it? We must go to the people in places of pain and suffering to both serve them in their physical needs and to guide them to the source of all help, healing, comfort, and restoration. As hurting people cry out like this to God, let’s be the answer to their cries, as it says in the Psalms, “But in my distress I cried out to the Lord; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him reached his ears” (18:6). . . .

Welcoming a refugee family resettling in our country is a great place to start for those who are pursuing God’s heart for the nations. This is a beautiful, strategic, obedient thing to do as Christ’s followers. Helping here sets us up to run towards the incredible opportunity to love those fleeing violence even outside our own countries.

* USA for UNHCR, “What Is a Refugee?” UNRefugees.org, accessed February 21, 2018, http://www.unrefugees.org/what-is-a-refugee/.