Month: November 2015

It’s during the hustle and bustle of traveling as we leave our hotel in Istanbul and pile into the airport shuttle, coffee in hand and eyes double checking the time on our wrists. It’s in the midst of a frenzied realization that one of our bags is forgotten on the steps outside the hotel, becoming smaller and smaller out of the back window of the shuttle. It happens after an emphatic and relieved “çok sağol! çok sağol!” to our driver as we settle back into our seats, recounting our bags, sighing to each other, and saying “that was close!” while we look over our tickets and itinerary. It’s on a busy road leading our van to the airport. It’s during heavy traffic – bottle necking – something inevitable to a city of this size. It’s on a congested road, with concrete buildings towering a mile high on our right and the blue-green sea sparkling on our left.

A quiet tapping on our window.

Waking us from the haze of our own streams of consciousness, of our thinking and planning for the hours of traveling to come, we lazily turn our attention towards the sound.

For a minute we’re blinded by the afternoon sun reflecting off the churning waters of the Bosphorus. Squinting our eyes we see a man peering into our window, clutching a toddler, two small legs wrapped tightly around his waist. His wife standing next to him, each hand grasping the tiny hands of her children at both her sides. Ten dark eyes stare back at our six light blue.

“Syrians. They want money,” our driver tersely explains through puffs of his cigarette. His words off-handedly tossed towards the back of the van as an answer to a question we did not ask.

…Money. Oh! They want money. Do you have any cash on you? Where’s my wallet? Wait, everything’s packed away in the trunk. Money. They need money. Will money even help? How far will a couple crumpled lira get them? Are you sure we don’t have anything in our pockets? Check again.

And in a moment, much like the nearly forgotten suitcase, the family is left behind in the rear window as the van lurches forward and traffic continues on. Five solemn faces. Five beating hearts. Five humans with five incredible, unique, heart-breaking stories to tell. Five souls that were purposefully formed by and made in the image of God. Five souls whose realities now only know fleeing and fear.

Friends, my heart is really heavy tonight.

I spent a good chunk of my day off from teaching today reading different articles and blogs and watching segments from news channels about everything that’s been happening in the world this past week. The comment sections and the anti-this and anti-that pictures that have been shared on Facebook have left me feeling sadder and sadder each time I scroll down.

Life in America can be so disconnected and easy and comfortable. And so can my little life in Turkey. It’s so easy to sip our coffee as we angrily type our emotion-fueled opinions online about “them” in our warm and safe homes, in a country where our government is for us and protects us. It’s so easy to make incredibly over-simplified, blanket statements about a group of people that we’ve never met or even cared to see the faces of. It’s so easy to dehumanize people when we’re thousands and thousands of miles away in the comforts of our homes.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Lord, breathe your spirit over us.

Lord, build your kingdom right here.

Show us where Jesus is in all of this.

Friends, please, please, please know that life is bigger than America and red cups with no snowflakes and blog posts and social media and you and me.

There are many things I can say here and many Bible verses I can rattle off. But here’s what I want to do: I want you to come here. Pull up a chair next to me. Stop wringing your hands and shaking your fist. Be still and listen – really listen for a minute.

What if Jesus really meant all that stuff? Like, really, really, for real, meant it?

…Loving our enemies.

…Clothing the naked.

…Caring for the sick.

…Welcoming the stranger.

If we take Jesus’ words at face value, then woah, those are some intense commands. Loving enemies? Welcoming strangers? Nope. No way. That’s risky. That’s complicated. That’s messy. That’s hard. That’s impossible.

Let me let you in on a not-so-secret secret: Jesus really did mean all that stuff.

Loving someone is risky. It’s uncomfortable. It’s audacious. But guess what? Perfect love casts out fear.

Did you hear that? Perfect love casts out fear.

Friends, it is my cry that your hearts – my heart – do not become clouded with fear and hate and closed doors and turned backs – no! Fight against it, please.

Perfect love casts out fear.

These are real people, with real stories, real hurts, real souls.

It’s families who have fled to Turkey, only to be denied work visas, living off of quickly disappearing savings, waiting in limbo for their next visa appointment, which isn’t until 2025. It’s a man who has fled here with his family, without work and without money, who’d rather make the dangerous trek back to die in his war-torn homeland than die in a foreign land. It’s a woman with a Master’s in chemistry, with two smart sons, now finding herself working illegally at a hair salon, hours and hours a day on her feet, and getting paid next to nothing. It’s an entire generation of children who will go uneducated because of regulations and laws and language barriers and school fees that are blocking them from learning.

It’s easy to distance ourselves and only see refugees as statistics on the news and angry words on our screen. But, it gets a little  a lot harder when we see ten eyes staring right into our own. It’s get harder when five somber faces are etched into our brains each night we curl up in our warm beds. It gets harder when we realize we’re blessed with a home, a safe place to go, a stable government, a place to belong. It gets harder when we can’t even begin to imagine with it’s like to be a refugee.

These are real people, with real stories, real hurts, real souls.

And when we realize this and let ourselves see this, our hearts make no room for fear. Terrorism breeds on fear, but perfect love is its kryptonite.

I don’t know what the ultimate answer is. I am grounded enough to know that what’s happening in the world right now is really, really complicated. Yes, as a country, we need to be wise. But, I can say that the answer is not wringing hands and shaking fists. It’s not slamming the doors closed one state at a time because fear has overwhelmed us. It’s not generalized assertions about a group of people kept at arm’s length and neatly in the confines of numbers and statistics.

The ocean between us is wide and vast, I know that. But there is room at the table for all of us. Friends, let’s welcome the fleeing, fearful, homeless families to the table. Come. Come. Come. There’s room for you here.

Father, have mercy on us. Help us to love fearlessly. Show us that there is room. Show us Jesus in all of this. Come, Lord.