Picture from website "Classical Mystery Tour"
Last Saturday was my wife Renee's birthday. Since I knew that I would soon be disappearing on a long thru hike of the AT, I wanted to do something special this year. I received a flyer from the Charlotte Symphony that they would be playing the songs from the Beatles' "Sargeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, since 2017 marks 50 years since its release. Yeah, this should be good! We went expecting just to hear the symphony play the songs (elevator music, right? but hey it's the Beatles), but lo and behold the 4 guys who performed with the orchestra looked and sounded just like the original "Fab Four." We left the venue pumped, as we had just experienced a few hours journey down memory lane.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It brings to mind old memories and the warm feelings associated with them. It's always fun to return to places, events, songs and people who mean a lot to us. As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz "there's no place like home!"
Renee and I bought a house in our home town in 2010. We remodeled it in 2015. We chose to return to the home town so we could be close to our parents and help them in their latter years. However there's also no denying the the special memories we have of growing up in that place, and the myriad of friends we have there, also created their own tug on our hearts.
How does this relate to the S. Sudanese refugee crisis?
Well, can you imagine for a minute that your home town has been destroyed? The old home place has been burned down, along with the school you attended, the shops where you bought food and other goods, and everyone you grew up with are now scattered in camps in either Ethiopia, Kenya or Uganda. You have no idea when you will be able to return home, and when that time comes you know so many things will never be the same. Maybe your spouse died during the war, or you lost children and other loved ones during the conflict, or to malnutrition experienced while displaced.
An uncertain future, a truly tough present, and a destroyed past must wreak a horrible toll on the human psyche.
This is why we believe it is so important to give of ourselves to make sure our displaced S. Sudanese brethren have access to the Word of God. God's Word contains a message of the greatest hope and encouragement one can receive. Reading and knowing it can lead one to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ; and it is an eternal, never-to-be-destroyed or snatched away thing. Reading God's Word helps us to understand that no matter what happens to us in life, we do not have to go through it alone. The Spirit of God lives within His people, and fellow believers, the Body of Christ, become our new forever family. Through reading/hearing the Word, we learn how to live as pilgrims and strangers in this world. We learn about an eternal home in heaven, where God is, and that He will wipe away every tear and remove completely everything that is evil and causes pain.
Only the splendid narrative found in the Bible can replace what man made violence has destroyed.
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