I struggled for a while writing this, honestly, as it’s taken me over a week to even begin to process what is happening here in Malaysia. I struggled, too, that while the words that follow these will be full of a lot of hard stuff, there is such goodness here too!! But you need to see the hard stuff first.
Nothing that I write here will even begin to adequately express the feelings that flood my heart as I watch men and women trample over one another, their children and anyone else in their path, to fight for basic provisions like fresh water and diapers? I watched grown adults fight over toilet bowl brushes. Toilet. Bowl. Brushes. Those who didn’t make it past the mob into the vans scraped up trampled left overs out of the mud. One lone shoe. A broken, stepped on, toothbrush. A package of tissues.
Do you see these sweet little hands? You couldn’t unclench these hands if you wanted to. His need and desire to have anything of his own that desperate. His hair turning orange, along with many of these children, due to malnutrition. But that’s another conversation for another day…
Genocide has brought these Refugees here but a hurricane has taken their desperate situation and has turned it desolate. What little they may have possessed before the beginning of November was washed away in the sewage and muck that flooded and ravaged their homes for days. Waters that, even a week and some later, still remain too high as rain continues to fall.
From your cozy bed in the States, this may not matter much to you. Your opinion on Refugees and their care may not be swayed. I’m not here to sway you. I am here to shed light and truth.
You may continue to allow politics and government to rule your heart, hardening it to the realities of this world. You may be able to continue to push displaced/hurting/victimized individuals from your mind because they aren’t right in front of you. I’ve been there. But now, I see faces. Those faces have names and I know their stories. I can no longer push them from my mind, because now they live in my heart.
As you go to sleep tonight, I pray that you know that there are millions around the world wondering if they’ll make it to tomorrow. There are millions seeking refuge from unthinkable atrocities against them. There are millions enslaved by sin and darkness that has taken our world captive. They’re carrying the world on their shoulders.
I pray that you can start to really see these people.
153 million orphans, the 30 million sex slaves, 2 billion unreached peoples, 65 million refugees.
They’re all pretty easy to ignore when you can’t associate a face with a number.
But I pray that you can see them now.
