I turned on the television to catch the news while I was
preparing supper. Pictures of desperate refugees
streamed across the screen.
In the face of so much global and local need, an abyss looms in my heart. “What can I do?” I do not
have medical training. I cannot
translate. But this I know, in the words
of Oswald Chambers, “Obey God in the thing He shows you, and instantly the next
thing is opened up.”
I signed up as a volunteer at a medical clinic in town that
cares for the underserved. Every Monday
morning, newly-placed refugees and immigrants arrive for medical examinations
and documentation. Eyesight is checked,
blood pressure is taken, and health assessed.
As I crossed the threshold of the clinic that morning, small
groups of people had already arrived, conversing around folding tables, their
languages blending together like so many voices in a beautiful chorus. And a grace prevailed in the large crowded
room, so palpable I could feel it.
Quite suddenly as I scanned the room, the scene became
profoundly familiar, like a series of black and white photographs that I had
seen many times before. I chuckled.
Is this what he saw
every day? Not strangers, but
people coming to a new home?
For a minute or two, I saw this room through the eyes of my
great grandfather Harvey Snider. From 1900
until he retired 34 years later, Harvey worked as the night superintendent at
Ellis Island, the incredible portal for 12 million people who entered America
until it closed in 1954.
I remembered his old photographs of newly-arriving
immigrants in the Great Hall. From the
stories that my father told about him, Harvey knew operable words in 41
different languages. He knew the power
of familiar words in one’s native language to inform, guide and comfort.
God reminded me that from
cover to cover His Word is a book about displaced people. “Love the sojourner” even before he becomes
your neighbor (Leviticus 19.34). Remember
you were a stranger too, the LORD says.
At the Monday clinic, nametags were already prepared, handed
to each one as they came through the door.
Each person was known not by an impersonal government code, or a numbered
place in queue like at the bakery, but by
one’s own name. These people were not refugees being processed and
documented, but individuals who were warmly welcomed and greeted and cared
for.
A different kind of party was going on.
The world sees hospitality as the entertaining of
friends. But the Bible defines it as the love of strangers. God enables us to respond in a way that is unexpected
by the world, not from a sense of obligation or necessity, but out of a
gut-wrenching compassion for those around us. These
people before us were not strangers at all, but simply those whom we do not yet
know.
I passed out white
paper bags that morning, containing items like shampoo, toothpaste, soap and
granola bars. “I have some gifts for you,” I told one beautiful young Iraqi woman,
not realizing how to explain with hand motions the function of dental floss and
stumbling over how to describe a Clif Bar to someone whose previous address was
a refugee camp.
I was not even able to engage in conversation with our new
friends. “Welcome,” I wanted to
say. “I’m glad you are here.”
I do not have even the limited proficiency of my great
grandfather in 41 different languages, but ironically enough, that morning we
served exactly 41 individuals, and I
learned that a smile translates perfectly into every language around me.
How do I know?
Because they smiled back.
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