Across the Border

We’ve been watching the events in Ukraine with grief and heavy hearts, knowing that their stories are similar to the ones we’ve heard before and yet there is also the hope that perhaps their stories will turn out differently.  Time will tell.  Leaving one’s homeland is never an easy decision, and most often those who flee are met with unopen arms.  They make it across one boarder into another country that is often struggling with their own financial and societal troubles.     But the current message I’m hearing is a different one.  It’s one of welcome.  That still doesn’t make the journey easy, just easier.  Families have been torn apart, fathers staying to defend their country; mothers fleeing to protect the next generation.  Homes have been destroyed leaving an uncertainty about what one could return to.  The welcome the Ukrainian refugees are receiving in Poland and other neighboring countries is encouraging and I pray that it continues.     A friend asked if we were going to be getting any Ukrainian refugees soon in Clarkston.  I don’t know the answer for certain, but I’d say that it’s doubtful, especially in large numbers anytime soon.  The primary reason I say that isn’t as much to do with how many people the US is allowing in, but rather because this crisis just started.  Again and again we heard stories from people in the camps in Lebanon that they stayed just across the border because their hope was to return to their own country and help rebuild.  Days turned into weeks, then years, and now it’s been over a decade.  It’s still not safe for them to return.     Some people will make a decision early to walk away from the chance to return and focus on starting a new life somewhere else.  They may end up here, they may end up in some other place of refuge.  Generally speaking though, people will stay close to home with the hopes of returning for at least a year before they realize that home might not ever be home again.

Photo from Times UK

This is nothing new though.  In the book of Ruth, Naomi’s story is much the same.  She left Judah, not because of war, but because of famine and drought.  She didn’t fear violence but nonetheless feared death if she remained.  Naomi was in a foreign land long enough to be widowed. Then following that, not just one, but both of her sons were married before her sons also passed away.  Despite leaving her home to avoid death, she encountered it anyway.  After about ten years she heard the news that she’d longed to hear.  She could return home again without fear of more suffering.     Ten years.  We met people in the camps that could relate.  They put down roots… kind of.  They started their lives again… sort of.  They were always waiting though.  Refugee camps are like that, they aren’t designed as permanent dwellings but rather as temporary structures to keep you somewhat protected by the elements of nature, and as long as the weather is mild and pleasant, they do a basic job.  The people living in the tents or substandard housing are often waiting for news that they could safely return.     I wonder now how many of the Ukrainians will settle in Poland and Hungary for now, thankful for the welcome they’re receiving but longing to return.  Waiting for the day that they can safely cross back over the border and begin to rebuild.   I wonder when we will receive those that give up hope to ever return and wonder if they will find us as a place of welcoming and renewed hope for a new home.     I pray for the safe return of refugees to their homelands and when that is not possible, I pray that they would be welcomed here with a transformative love.

“Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16