Disclaimer: I’ve very intentionally postponed writing this blog, simply because it makes me too emotional whenever I think about my time in Moria refugee camp in Lesvos, Greece.
And then that’s when I realized that’s exactly why I need to write this. l cannot say enough to accurately convey how deeply l feel about this topic. My prayer is that after reading this, you won’t only see this as a ‘nice thought’ or a ‘beautiful blog’ or a revelation that God only wants for me. My prayer is that in the same way that l am, you are challenged to be all who God made you to be by embracing a lost and dying world in a way that only you can.
“Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they’re not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.” David Platt.
There’s a prayer we pray as Christians, that we put in our worship songs, that we write out in pretty fonts, that I’ve always found very charming but never actually thought about too much.
“Break my heart for what breaks yours.”
It’s a beautiful sentiment, honestly. I love the idea that my heart is so like the Father’s that what He feels is what I feel, how He sees people is how I do, that I love as intentionally as He does, that I care as deeply like He does.
But the thing is, praying for your heart to break means that you are asking for your heart to break. Literally asking to be broken hearted. To be grieved, empty handed, despairing.
Those emotions are the result of what asking for your heart to break means. Normally when circumstance leads us to having a broken heart, we’re desperately trying to get our hearts mended. l can’t remember any day ever where l woke up and thought, “l hope l get my heart broken today!”
I didn’t ask for my heart to be broken when I came to Moria. I didn’t even really think about what I was doing, really. In America, and even most other places that I’ve been this year, it was pretty easy to push the thought of all the displaced people around the world from my mind because they aren’t right in front of me.
David Platt has an amazing quote about this, that I referenced in the beginning of this blog.
“[People] are easier to ignore before you know their names.”
I know this first hand to be true. Because trust me, the 153 million orphans, the 30 million sex slaves, and the 2 billion unreached peoples are all easier to ignore when you can’t associate a face with a number.
The 65 million refugees in the world are no different. But being able to see a number on a statistic as a soul that you personally know, encountered, talked to, hugged, joked with, and loved truly changes everything.
l will never again hear of Syrian refugees and not picture my friend Sassy, who is my age and has experienced more trauma than his years supply. I won’t hear about the African refugee crisis and not remember the smiles and fierce attitudes of the beautiful women in Section C who out of fear left their lives and moved across the world alone. I won’t see teenage boys and be quick to forget the unaccompanied minors from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Congo and how desperate they were to find meaning and hope despite feeling like their lives were robbed from them before even beginning. I won’t ever say “America needs to just take care of America” or “let another country deal with it” and not think about all the refugees who have drowned and died because their boats have flipped while trying to escape Turkey and come to Greece because of the abuse they faced at camps there. I won’t see 5 year old kids whose biggest concern should be starting school without remembering crazy Salam and sweet Mohammed, who helped me at my gate every day, and who have grown up far too quickly within the barbed wire fences of Moria.
There were over 4,000 refugees at camp while I was there, and my team only heard and experienced the tiniest fraction of all the heartbreaking stories.
My heart breaks for the hopelessness, for the lies from the enemy, for the trauma, for the death, for the abuse, for the evil, for the confusion, for the brokenness of the world that these refugees have all experienced first hand. My heart breaks for the silence they’ve been experiencing from people like you and me.
I hated the way thinking about them made me feel. It hurt, and I couldn’t escape it. The word l can get closest to what l was feeling was empathy, but that hardly is what it was. While I truly feel like I’ve gone through hardships and experienced real levels of pain in my own life, I also feel that the most pain I have felt in my life pales in comparison to what they have gone through. I thought about how broken-hearted my hardships left me, and to what a greater degree these refugees felt that suffering. And if that’s so, how strong they are. How broken they are. How abandoned they feel. How alone they feel. How confused, lonely, and lost they are.
How truly and desperately in need of Hope they are.
I wanted and have tried to push these faces from my mind and continue on with my race and focus on other things. Honestly, that’s an ugly truth. And I get why so many Americans go on one mission trip a year and never give God the space to actually call them somewhere long term. It literally feels like too much to bear. It truly is easier to ignore the hurting peoples of the world when you choose to busy yourself and close your eyes to their existence.
It is easier choose to live in ignorance, yes. And it is a choice. Ignorance to the marginalized may be bliss for you, but it results in death spiritually, emotionally and physically to those you forsake. No matter how you rationalize it, the choice to ignore is not worth it.
Thankfully, the weight of all the refugees’ emotions, their pain and their pasts and futures (and my own too, honestly) is not on my shoulders. We’ve got an amazing God with a bigger heart and more love than we can imagine. He wants to take care of us. His heart is to love us.
God cares about refugees infinitely more than I do. God cares about their hurt, their purpose, their home countries and their future generations more than I can comprehend.
However, I believe that God wants me, and all of us, to partner with Him and carry His heart to all the marginalized, forgotten, and lost. He wants us to carry His heart – not to remain broken hearted in feelings of helplessness and sadness, but to channel His heart in our own, and be beacons of light in a dark world.
If going to Lesvos, Greece has shown me anything, it’s that God’s heart for people, including God’s heart for you, is never intended to be stifled, hidden and ignored.
I’ve seen that allowing God to break your heart hurts like hell – literally. But truly asking Him to break your heart for what breaks His propels you further into loving like He does, and being who He has called you to be. It means you experience deeper pain, surely, but it also means you experience deeper measures of healing and love.
I’m convinced that if we can identify the things of this world that break both our hearts and God’s heart, it is underneath those hurts that our passion and purpose lie. God is calling you to infinitely deeper measures of knowing His love by learning to care ferociously for the people of this world.
Don’t settle for less.
