Meeting the Migrants and Myself

We visited the hotel last night, where people in migration are being hosted until the government agencies can figure out who they are and where they may go from here.

We meet people in transit. They have uprooted from their homes and seek a better life somewhere else on this earth.

            I have met some before. I am in general friendly to foreigners. I was myself a stranger in a foreign land for 20 years. Still, I felt my reactions yesterday were mixed. I saw many newcomers, and the vast majority were men in their prime – somewhere between 20-40 years of age. There was a strange smell in the foyer, a smell of sour tobacco and old body odors. I sensed a lot of questions, skepticism, a slight hostility in my soul: Why are they coming? Who are they leaving behind? Do they really need our help?

            I had no problems embracing the two young single mothers I had met there before. We chatted. They had brought kids and one of them was also responsible for two brothers. The young women were from Syria and Iraq. They were well educated, and they could communicate in English. I was beginning a friendship.

            But the multitude of single men adrift – that was not so easy to embrace - until this morning.

Migrants from the Middle East

I was driving along our narrow roads, when the most obvious words from Jesus rang in my head: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” A stranger: no other qualification: strangers may smell differently, they may not share my culture, they may be single and male… I visited a thought from my theology studies, which wanted to narrow the words of Jesus to cover only other Christians. But it did not suffice: A stranger is a stranger. The words of Jesus kept coming: “I was naked, and you clothed me.” Ah, winter clothing. I have some stuff up on the attic, a warm down jacket, which will never fit me again, and…

But what if they are harmful? What if they will contribute to something negative in our country? What if they are, in a sense, my enemies?  I did not really get to verbalize the thought in my mind before the words of Jesus met me again: “Love your enemy.”

By the time I was parking the car in the garage, I knew what my response to the newcomers is: Whoever they are, they are created by God; they are my ‘neighbours’, and they concern me.

God has called me to pray; and a heavenward attitude will result in acts on earth.

Ora et labora.

That is the outcome of a relationship with a dynamic God. I meet myself, and I meet His challenge.