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Friendly greetings or a threatening mob: how do you see them?

Corrie Ten-Boom’s book ‘The Hiding Place’ was a life-changing book for me.  Reading it showed me that one could truly know Jesus Christ on a personal level, not just know about him.  It also showed me that there could be an enormous cost to this, as shown by the fact that Corrie and her family paid a very heavy price for hiding Jews from the Nazis until being betrayed on 28th Feb 1944.  Corrie’s generosity, compassion and faithfulness were instrumental in my coming to Christ and I am for ever grateful to her.  But I have been haunted by the question: given the number of Christians in Europe at that time, “why were there so few ‘Corrie Ten Booms’?  

Today there is systematic persecution and killing of Christians in many parts of the Middle East on a scale which has not been seen for centuries. There are more refugees (of all faiths and none) on the move than at any time since 1945.  Perhaps because these problems are so overwhelming there is a temptation to pull up the duvet and bury one’s  head rather than to engage with them.  In an effort to ensure that when people look back on this time people don’t have to ask Why didn’t more Christians do more to respond to the Refugee Crisis?   I have been working with a team of friends  to help shape the response plan for our local church.  We have produced a short magazine.  Download Refugee Responder Issue 1  here for:-

  1. An  honest look at how we see refugees and
  2. What does the Bible say on the Subject and
  3. Some suggestions about what we can do about it. (Other suggestions are to be presented to the church in future weeks).

Please let me have your comments….