Please pray for the world’s refugees and for victims of terrorism. The world now has more displaced people than during World War II. Let that statement sink in. There are now more refugees now today than during the Nazi holocaust of the Jews.
“You already understand why we are here,” says one of the 15
displaced Christians and Muslims who have gathered at a World
Vision food distribution site in the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region. “Everyone in America should know about our crisis by now: ISIS.”
Beyond Europe, another 2.5 million refugees are in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, while 4.5 million people remain displaced within Syria and Iraq, where ISIS is most active.
Ali, 43, climbs the steps of an unfinished, concrete building. He has lived here with his family of 9 for the past 15 months. His wife and children, ranging from ages 5 to 18, fled from south of Baghdad after they were threatened at gunpoint. “They took our homes and our
money,” he says. “Everything is gone. “ We don’t know when we will go back.”
Ali, once a school bus driver, sold his bus to relocate his family. Now he’s a day laborer, working on the three-story building next door that is even more unfinished than his own temporary dwelling. “I always think of going back home once peace comes. I wish it were tomorrow. But we don’t know the future. I am waiting for God.”
You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:34
Pastor Nathan