Imagine being wrenched from your home with its familiar nooks and crannies, witnessing your church erupting in flames — and fleeing with your family in the night. This is the harsh reality of everyday life for many Iraqi refugees whose lives were shattered by ISIS attacks.
It would be easy to envision these Christians being bitter and vengeful, and plotting to get even with the vicious marauders who turned their worlds upside down.
Still, as I watched a video of shy and smiling refugee children, now living a haphazard existence in a shopping mall, I was startled by a very different reaction.
You see, a journalist asked a brown-eyed girl — attired in a pink jogging suit decorated with kittens — what she missed most in the refugee camp.
“Our school and our church,” she said in Arabic.
“We used to have a house and were entertained,” added a golden-haired girl, who admitted things are different now.
But in the same breath, she thanked God for providing for the families — a remark that seemed to startle the interviewer.
“God loves us and wouldn’t let ISIS kill us,” she explained.
The child didn’t hesitate when asked about her feelings toward the terrorists who have engineered great losses for her family. “I will only ask God to forgive them.”
At one point, Jesus’ disciples asked him who was the greatest in heaven, and he pointed to a child. After all, a young heart is open and vulnerable, and not walled in with the tough protective layers we add as we grow older.
In her book “Faith,” 20th-century Russian writer Catherine de Hueck Doherty — who ministered to the poor — wrote, “Faith walks simply, like a child, between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.”
A simple faith means trusting that God stands beside us, no matter what. Yes, there may be great suffering, illnesses, losses and trouble. We may sometimes feel like we’re stumbling down a perilous path with no candle.
Still, we can learn from the little ones who have lived through disaster, while still preserving their faith. One girl affirmed that “Jesus will be with us no matter where we go.”
But you may wonder, as I did, where people find God in a refugee camp. “In our hearts,” her friend said, tapping her chest.
These innocents are striking witnesses to Christianity in their humble, trusting ways. They have lost their toys and games and comforts, their schools and their churches — but still possess what matters most.
Dressed in their bright outfits adorned with kittens, they are living examples of Christ’s words, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Let’s not forget this mystical message of Christianity that can sustain us in our bleakest hours.
No matter where we are — in our happy home, a nursing facility, a hospital, a prison, a refugee camp — if we keep a childlike faith kindled in our lives, then heaven will be as close as our hearts.
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