Dear (American) Christian,

I don’t normally write just to you, but here goes.

It’s been over a year, maybe two, or even three (I can’t keep track anymore) since we’ve begun regularly reading about “migrants” drowning in the Mediterranean or left adrift in the Andaman Sea for months on end. From an aid worker’s perspective – the numbers are staggering. According to the BBC, over 20,000 asylum seekers entered Germany over the weekend.

Those are wartime numbers.

The kind of numbers you see when entire villages have been surrounded by rebels and burned to the ground. When push factors are machetes and shrapnel and hunger and rape.

Indeed, people much smarter than I are calling this the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

And we’ve been ignoring it for years.

A few days ago I saw a picture in the news that struck me. I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I’d seen it somewhere before. And then I realized. I’ve seen that picture many times in my youth, if not with my eyes, the words nevertheless imprinted on my mind. The iconic imagery of salvation: the lost drowning in a raging sea. A rock rising from its depths upon which they cling.

It’s hard to Google a picture when you don’t know the artist, its title, or even when it was painted. I typed “salvation + sea + rescue + boat” and after scrolling through a few safety equipment websites, I came across the ministry of Keith Green’s widow, Melody. The webpage featured the vision of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, and a painting entitled, “Who Cares?”

While the picture was not quite what I remembered, the vision is more relevant now than ever. Sometime between 1865 and 1906 Booth wrote:

I saw a dark and stormy ocean.

In that ocean I thought I saw myriads of poor human beings plunging and floating, shouting and shrieking, cursing and struggling and drowning;

And I saw out of this dark angry ocean, a mighty rock that rose up with its summit towering high above the black clouds that overhung the stormy sea. And all around the base of this great rock I saw a vast platform. Onto this platform, I saw with delight a number of the poor struggling, drowning wretches continually climbing out of the angry ocean.

On looking more closely I found a number of those who had been rescued, industriously working and scheming by ladders, ropes, boats and other means more effective, to deliver the poor strugglers out of the sea. Here and there were some who actually jumped into the water, regardless of the consequences, in their passion to rescue the perishing.

But only a very few of them seemed to make it their business to get the people out of the sea.

And so the multitude went on right before them struggling and shrieking and drowning in the darkness.

My friends in Christ, you are rescued from the waters, you are on the rock, He is in the dark sea calling on you to come to Him and help Him.

Does the surging sea look dark and dangerous? Unquestionably it is so.

With the light that is now broken in upon your mind and the call that is now sounding in your ears, and the beckoning hands that are now before your eyes, you have no alternative. To go down among the perishing crowds is your duty. Your happiness from now on will consist in sharing their misery, your ease in sharing their pain, your crown in helping them to bear their cross, and your heaven in going into the very jaws of hell to rescue them.
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On Wednesday a father lost his wife and littles. The youngest pictured in the sand: red shirt, blue shorts, Velcro sneakers.

At three years old, Aylan Kurdi had been displaced 3 times before he ever got in that in boat. Damascus. Aleppo. Kobane. Turkey.

Kobane.

I’ve held Kobane’s children in my arms. Aylan, if you had come to my camp, would I have seen you, noticed you?

As a humanitarian community, we failed you. We stuffed you in mosques and clinics and schools for months. We were proud when we found you a tent and a place to pitch it. Then we cut your food rations because you weren’t the most vulnerable. We talked about durable solutions, but we found none.

So you left.

And you got in that boat.
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Dear (American) Christian,

I know you’ve seen the pictures. Dinghies and ships filled with migrants and refugees. Children in life jackets scrambling across jagged rocks as they reach shore. Mothers cold and blue in the water.

Perhaps you even saw Aylan, lifted as though sleeping from the water’s edge, carried in the arms of a Turkish police officer.

And now you are watching the strong march across Europe, pushing strollers and dragging sleepy toddlers along the way. Volunteers opening their hearts and hands to receive them on the other side.

And they seem so far away.

Dear American Christian,

It isn’t enough to be inspired by activists who are welcoming refugees in Germany. It isn’t enough to cheer them from the sidelines. It isn’t enough just to pray for the migrants.

The time for isolationism is over. It’s time for action. For giving. For petitioning. For volunteering. For hosting. For inclusion.

Today you have an opportunity to live your faith. To rescue the drowning.

For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the {refugees} will arise from another place. And who knows but that you have come to your position for such a time as this?” – Esther 4:14 (paraphrase mine)

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/authorize-and-resettle-syrian-refugees-us

http://www.vorservices.org/default.html

http://worldreliefgardengrove.org/

https://preemptivelove.nationbuilder.com/backtoschool?utm_campaign=bts_launch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=preemptivelove

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/refugee.crisis.five.things.you.can.do.to.help/63775.htm

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/current/5-organizations-helping-people-iraq-and-syria

http://www.lastdaysministries.org/Articles/1000008646/Last_Days_Ministries/LDM/Discipleship_Teachings/Other/Who_Cares.aspx

https://www.salvationarmy.org.au/Global/State%20pages/Victoria/Crossroads/Spiritual%20Care/vision%204%20lost.pdf