A Different Kind of Kindness

I met a man who lost his three middle fingers. Most of his right hand was gone as well leaving just a stump with the thumb and little finger poking out either side. It all started with a simple cut to his hand while doing his daily work as a cane basket and furniture maker. But the cut wouldn’t heal and became infected. (At the time he wasn’t aware that he had diabetes.) So he went to the local traditional healer who made a poultice of mysterious ingredients, most likely one of which was cow dung – a common remedy for wounds. The healer then chanted magic words, blew on his hand and sent him home.

Instead of healing the infection worsened. The hand swelled up like a balloon, all red and inflamed. Eventually he came to see a medical doctor at a government hospital in Phnom Penh. By this stage it was too late to save the hand and the man had surgery to remove the rotten flesh. I think the surgeon hoped the remaining thumb and little finger would be able to oppose and give him at least some function. But it seems they failed to send him for follow up therapy and by the time I saw him, some three months after the operation, the man’s remaining digits, wrist and shoulder where stiff and painful from immobility.

It is hard to understand how a simple cut can lead to a man losing his livelihood and becoming totally dependent on his family. The maddening thing is that a different response at any one of a number of points along his story would have led to a better outcome.

I felt angry, frustrated and quite useless as a physio trying to address this situation, knowing that most likely he would return home to his village the next day and never return for follow up treatment.

The Khmer nurse who was helping me communicate with this patient suggested in the end that we pray for him. I was all for that as I knew what I’d done so far was not likely to make any difference and the man himself was very happy to be prayed for. So that is what we did. There was no miracle cure but the long discussion that then proceeded between this godly nurse and the patient, full of questions and deep seeking, was itself a demonstration of God’s grace and love. The man left encouraged and hopeful.

Despite my exasperation at the number of the serious but preventable health problems I’ve seen I have been constantly amazed at the way the gospel is so openly and naturally shared through the staff at this Christian clinic. It did, however, make a bit more sense after our latest ‘foundation year’ morning.

We’ve been organising monthly seminars for the newer people in our team. On Saturday we heard from some very experienced people sharing their insights on Khmer culture and Buddhism. An interesting point came up about how we talk about spiritual things. Often in Western cultures we feel it is polite to be quite reserved and careful not to impose our beliefs on others until we feel the right opportunity comes along or the relationship is developed sufficiently. It seems that in this culture if you have something good or know some good news it is unkind and uncaring not to share it with others.* In this context faith sharing with people you meet is therefore seen as something very natural. I’m learning a lot from the people I meet and some of my own cultural values and assumptions are certainly being challenged.

* Maybe this is why the temple and the aerobics dancers love to use loud speakers directed outwards. It would be seen as unkind to not share their good experiences with the whole community. This puts a very annoying aspect of life here in a new light.

Sharing Good News

Nearee had a motorbike accident over ten year ago. She lost her memory, her ability to read and write and suffered disabling nerve damage in her right arm. Today Nearee is a passionate evangelist. She believes that through prayer God has restored her ability to read the scriptures and she shares the Good News with whoever she can. She has plenty of opportunity to do this in her work as a cleaner at the Christian clinic where I met her. She does a little mopping of the floor and then stops to chat to the patients finding a way to encourage them and point them to Jesus. She told me how grateful she is for this job. ‘Many other places would never employ someone like me with a disability. But I have been working here for 10 years. Thankyou Lord Jesus.’

Nearee’s lack of inhibition, probably related to the head injury, does make her an unusual person. She chats away with me in Khmer and I don’t yet understand everything she says but she doesn’t seem to notice my faltering questions and vague looks. I did understand that she lives alone in a rented room which is very unusual for people here. She only sees her siblings and parents, out in the country side, about twice a year. It costs too much in travel to see them more often. When she has some spare money to buy milk and snacks she visits sick people because you can’t go empty handed. She follows up people she has met at the clinic, some of them with HIV, and goes to their homes to encourage them and pray.

In this culture it is believed that a disability is caused by bad karma. You live with the consequences of the bad deeds you’ve committed either in this life or in a previous life. But Nearee transcends this labelling. She knows that she is one whom Jesus calls blessed and it is clear she is being used to further His kingdom in and through her life situation.

I wonder what it would be like if more of us, regardless of our limitations and circumstances, lived with gratitude and love, simply seeking each day to share good news with somebody.

Streams of Living Water

“We think its arsenic poisoning.”

This was the conclusion the doctors came to after examining a boy with a strange lumpy skin rash. His parents brought him from their provincial village to the Mercy Medical clinic in the city which is known as a place that cares for the poor. As the boy’s brothers and sisters have also been unwell the best advice they could give was for the family, and in fact the entire village, to stop drinking the well water.

I have since discovered that there are places in Cambodia where the ground water is contaminated with up to 30 times the accepted ‘safe’ level of naturally occurring arsenic. Over the last few decades with a growing population and increasingly scarce and polluted river water there has been an explosion in deep tube well drilling. Well drilling projects by charitable organisations encouraged the widespread use of well water long before testing revealed that in many areas the water contained high arsenic concentrations.

Arsenic has no taste or smell and it takes years of slow build up in the body before symptoms appear. It can cause cancer of the skin and internal organs, respiratory disease, mental slowness, hearing loss in children, low birth weights and impaired skin sensation. Children are at greatest risk and the damage is irreversible.

Improving access to clean and safe water in Cambodia is essential for the people and the country’s future. Seventy four percent of all deaths in Cambodia are due to water borne diseases. It’s tragic, therefore, that well drilling projects aimed at improving the health of villagers by providing the much needed water inadvertently ended up poisoning them.

This fact got me wondering about other ways the things intended to bring life to us and those around us unintentionally carry instead disease and death. What if that which is flowing out from us is not always the ‘living water’ that Jesus promises but something more stagnant? What if the light within us is in fact darkness? Do our particular theologies, our forms of church structure, our organisational culture, our models of leadership, or our acts of service bring the life and freedom Jesus intends? These are concerning questions as we seek to serve, teach and be ambassadors of Christ.

For us here in Cambodia it is becoming clearer that in our own understanding or in our own ambitious plans and programmes we may easily, like those wells, do more harm than good.

In Jeremiah 2:13 the Lord reveals the sins of His people. They have forsaken their dependence on Him, their source of living water, and have instead dug their own cisterns, thinking their own plans will be safer and better. But the Lord declares that their cisterns are broken and they can not hold water. Only He can be for them the life that is truly life.

May we return constantly to a humble reliance on ‘Christ in us’, the Holy Spirit, who is the spring of living water, remembering the promise of Jesus that whoever follows him would never walk in darkness but have the light of life (John 8:12).

Source: www.rdic.org

Here Lies Pol Pot

“Pol Pot was cremated here” the sign announced. The remains of one of the most famous mass murderers of recent history are located high up in the hills on the Thai border in Cambodia’s remote north. I stood looking at a roughly build shelter about a metre in height made from old wood and rusty galvanised iron. There is no doubt he died nearby, because he was under house arrest enforced by his own cadres. His body was quickly cremated and his demise announced to the world. Pol Pot’s agrarian revolution of the 70’s was a disaster which left millions dead through either direct killings or the dreadful neglect of starvation and sickness.

As we arrived a woman was tending the incense and offerings left daily by the local people weighed down by the bad karma of having such a shrine in their community. I wasn’t sure what to expect. What does one feel visiting the grave of a mass murderer? There was no overwhelming sense of evil. No compelling sense of justice in his death. Rather the understanding that he was just a man who lived a life and then died.

I thought about the decisions he made during his life and the devastating results of his actions. We are constantly making decisions in our lives. What are the values and attitudes that shape those decisions? I found myself thinking of what we Christians have to guide us. I couldn’t go past these words Paul wrote…But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Letting Off Steam

‘There! Found one!’

In the oven like sun I weaved my bike between motos, carts and pedestrians across the road stopping next to the man with the key cutting machine. Fumbling with my sunglasses, I rummaged though my bag, found the keys and, with sweat drenched helmet hair, blurted out my request for two new sets of keys. I held up two fingers and the keys as props in case my foreign and bedraggled appearance distracted him from listening to the actual words I was saying.

Once the message was made clear he cheerfully got on with the job, grinding metal against metal. As I waited beside him I took in more of the scene before me. Behind him on the cracked footpath squatted a young woman rhythmically swinging a sweaty baby back and forth in a makeshift hammock tied between a fence post and the key cutting cart. They had a piece of cloth on the ground that looked like their ‘camp’. The heat was almost visibly rising off the concrete. There was no shade to speak of and the exhaust fumes and dust from the road combined with the nearby rotting pile of rubbish made it a particularly unpleasant place to wait a few minutes let alone spend your days. I wondered where, if anywhere, this family went home to at night.

Their seemingly quiet acceptance of the heat, noise and pollution made me reflect on my own nerve fraying struggle though this year’s hot season.

From March until June every day felt like a battle with the heat induced exhaustion and the constant dampness of hair, clothes, and anything I sat on. But there were some days when the addition of incessant noise from traffic, dogs, construction and outdated aerobics music from distorted loudspeakers just about tipped me over the edge. On those days I didn’t want to be here anymore. I longed for the cool, calm, peace and quiet of suburban Adelaide. I dreamt of the autumn colours and beautiful gardens and parks.

When I looked around at how many here were living - no fridge, no fan, no ice, no air-conditioned café escape time – I could clearly see my own privileged position. I know that’s supposed to make me grateful but mostly it just made me feel disgusted with myself and magnified my own pathetic self absorption and desperation to be else where.

The feeling of being close to ‘the edge’ is not just about heat and noise but actually the combination of numerous cultural stressors and the transition grief common to moving into a foreign environment. The experience, however, has certainly helped me see clearly that, left to myself, I can’t do this. I really do desire a clean, orderly and pleasant life. Only Jesus can make me want something else. Thank God he is always at work in us, shaping and empowering us for his purposes (Philippians 2:13).It’s not just down to me.

Responding to Poverty

Last month, in the middle of the hot season, we travelled to a rural province to visit one of our IS colleagues (B) who is working as an agricultural advisor in a Christian development organisation. We rode motor scooters out to remote villages on rugged dirt tracks between bone dry paddy fields filled with cracked earth, the parched remains of old rice stalks and littered with modernity’s curse - plastics bags. In the villages life is hot and hard. There is no electricity or running water and children play in the dust. Currently the farmers in this region can harvest only one crop of rice a year due to lack of water in the dry months. Our friend and her Cambodian team mates are working together with the villagers to get a canal dug so that river water may be accessible to their fields enabling them to plant a second rice crop. This will make a huge difference to their lives and the wellbeing of their families but it is a slow, complicated process.

We were told that in this area they have an interesting way of defining relative wealth and poverty. Wealthy people always have plenty of rice to eat. The middle class only go hungry 2-3 months of the year. Poor people are hungry 6 months of the year and the destitute poor never have enough to eat.

When I think about it, and to be honest I usually try not to, I feel pretty uncomfortable about living so well and eating more food than is good for me while people nearby go hungry. There is an overwhelming impulse to dive in and ‘fix’ things. At least doing something would make me feel better. Couldn’t I simply hand out rice to those who are hungry? That’s got to be better than nothing, right?

I’ve studied community development theory, heard the stories and seen enough for myself to know that responding to poverty is not so straight forward. There are times when direct handouts are warranted and necessary but it won’t improve people’s ability to provide for their families in the long term. It only creates dependence.

Striving for transformation, building up capacity and infrastructure and facilitating community cooperation is very demanding and frustrating work, especially when there are opposing interest groups involved and corruption is an accepted part of life. Respectful discussion, listening to all the stake holders, giving everyone a say, making plans together, agreeing on each parties responsibilities and commitments all takes time, energy, patience and excellent communication and relationship skills. Doing that across culture and language differences is exceptionally challenging.

B’s dedication, love for the people and excellent language ability has inspired me to keep persevering with Khmer study. Her work and community life in rural Cambodia demonstrates that one of the more significant ways to serve the poor in this country is by learning their language.

The struggle for peace continues

The previous piece, 'War and Peace', was written some time ago about my relationship with ants during our years living in Thailand. Returning to live in Asia has reawakened old emotions and caused me to reflect on re-emerging struggles. I thought that I had grown through my experiences, come to a place of mature acceptance and worked through my issues with ants but since the hot season has started I’m finding my tolerance waning and the old anger and irritation resurfacing.

I have been scratching an ant bite on my arm for the last week. The swelling and redness is now larger than a fifty cent coin. I’ve seen signs of ant colonies out the front of our house and have started fearing that we may yet again be living on a major ant civilzation. They have been in our towels and in our food despite our little water dishes around the cupboard legs. Can Cambodian ants swim? Last night there were several tiny ants in my bed. I wanted to cry because they are so devious and will use any opportunity to deliberately aggravate and tease me.

It’s possible my emotional response has at times been out of proportion to the actual threat. There is a history, of course, and perhaps even unconscious fears about lack of control lying hidden deep in my psyche.

It seems to me that our growth is often cyclical. We are faced with a problem, uncover the underlying issues, see the larger picture, work through our pain, let go of things and find a level of peace. But inevitably this harmony is challenged. Something will trigger the old disturbing emotions. So how do we find lasting resolution?

This is an area I’ve been doing some reading on. It is suggested that the path to genuine freedom and maturity is found in the transforming work of Christ through the renewal of our minds and the experience of His love right at the source of our pain. Maybe my prayer, then, should not be ‘Lord, take away these ants (i.e. my discomfort and my problems) but rather ‘Come Lord Jesus, meet me here and reveal yourself to me’.

The struggle for serenity continues but not alone and not without hope. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Elliot has just informed me we have cockroaches breeding in the kitchen !!!!

War and Peace

Once, I declared war. Full of rage and righteousness. There would be no mercy.

It was a rash and arrogant decision born of anger, intolerance and fear. But I imagine many wars before mine have had equally flawed beginnings.

They first appeared as a small contingent, single file above the sink. Black scouts sent to assess the threat. We were still unpacking boxes, setting up beds and mosquito nets, fully absorbed and confident. We were moving in, oblivious. They kept coming, marching with military precision. A crumb of food left for only a moment was surrounded and seized. The sack of rice on the floor was invaded by a battalion of thousands. They surrounded the kitchen.

Incensed I armed myself with chemical weapons and attacked, sweeping the lifeless bodies into the bin. A mass grave. We guarded our supplies with moats made from bowls of water in which the legs of the food pantry stand. We drew the battle lines in chalk available from the corner shop, a Chinese defence mechanism. It’s a barrier they dare not cross. I relaxed feeling triumphant.

But the war was far from over. They employed new tactics. An opened packet of cough lozenges became a Trojan horse. We naively placed it in the food cupboard but undercover of night our rivals broke out taking the entire pantry as their own. Tiny red soldiers infiltrated my bath towel, undetected, until I felt the sting of a hundred bites burning my back and legs. With tears of fury, I called for reinforcements. A man with a backpack of fumigation chemicals arrived, no protective clothing or mask, just a willing smile. He sprayed all around the outside and under the house. He cheerfully announced that we were living on the nests of several different types of ants, big and small, red, black and orange. He was reluctant to spray the large orange ants outside on the trees as they lay juicy eggs, a local delicacy. All seemed quiet. Were we finally victorious?

It was only a matter of days before the infantry, this time a brownish midsized regiment, marched with discipline and unwavering loyalty down from the window sill and around the skirting boards of the bedroom. I was worn down. There was no fight left in me.

Admitting defeat I started negotiating a peace settlement.

‘You may patrol the kitchen, but the pantry moats remain. The bathroom may be used for military exercises but no war games in my towel’. This was now safely hanging on a rack away from the wall.

I came to see that in fact it was we who were the invaders. We were in their territory, disrupting a complex civilization that had survived millions of years. My comfort, convenience and privilege were not the only considerations. A harmonious co-existence required compromise, respect and allowing the other to simply be.

The word of Life

Roon greeted us with her beaming smile and her infectious joy.

It is always wonderful when someone gives you the kind of smile that lets you know they are genuinely happy to see you. It’s such a great feeling to be welcome.

Roon lives in a poor urban community here in Phnom Penh. She sleeps upstairs in the home of a local woman, Huon, with whom we stayed each night last week, while our boys where away on a school camp. For us it was an opportunity to practice some of the language we have been studying and to develop deeper connections with Khmer people.

We were brought into the household, ate with them, played with the kids, were given the only bed and just experienced being there in the middle of community life. We often didn’t fully understand what was going on around us. We never did completely work out the various relationships and who actually belonged to the household because so many people of all ages constantly flowed in and out. This was obviously a place where people felt welcome.

What we did observe was that Huon is a remarkable woman. She experienced enormous hardship as a young person followed by many years of grinding poverty. But her story is repeated over and over again by all Khmers who lived through the Pol Pot years. She seems to have always been a carer. She walked the streets of Phnom Penh selling things to help her younger siblings have an education, forgoing her own. Now she volunteers for a HIV/AIDS family support programme and has several people living in her small home who seem to have no family connections. She opens her home for community meetings, health education, Bible studies and until recently a fledgling preschool which now has grown and meets in the nearby church. She supports herself and others by doing house work for foreigners during the day.

On the second afternoon as we entered the small two room house we found Roon sitting on a wooden platform which was used as a table, sitting area, preparation space and bed. She was reading her Bible. Roon had a way of talking slowly and simply so we could follow a fair bit of what she said. ‘Thank you, Jesus’ was a phrase she repeated regularly. She talked of Jesus making her ‘sabaay jet’ meaning happy and well in her heart. This afternoon she was reading out loud with a finger moving slowly underneath the words. Every few words she would stop and spell out the letters and then try to sound out the word, sometimes calling out to someone younger in the house, ‘What does this spell?’ As she read and made sense of the words she would look up with eyes radiating sheer joy. She was drawing life and nourishment out of every phrase. She beckoned me over to share what she was reading. I was able to make out that it was Ephesians 1 so I got out my English Bible and read along with her. When she got to verse 19 about God’s incomparably great power for us who believe, a power which raised Christ from the dead and seated Him above all rule and authority, she flung out her arms and exclaimed, ‘Our God is so big’. I have never seen anyone find so much delight in reading scripture.

Later she led me up the stairs to the wooden room which she shares with two others. She showed me her sleeping space which consisted of a rolled up mat on the floor and an old mosquito net. That plus an old bicycle seems to be all she owns. She shared a little of how she never learnt to read as a child because she had virtually no schooling. Being 40, much of her childhood would have been consumed with the chaos of the genocide, civil war and the destruction of infrastructure which disrupted any semblance of normal community life for her entire country. What little schooling Roon did receive was largely a negative experience. She conveyed to me how the teacher would pinch and beat her for getting things wrong. I don’t know what happened to her family.

Roon says Jesus has opened her eyes and helped her learn to read the Bible and now this is what she loves to do. Her pastor has been helping her and setting her homework to read certain chapters every week.

Until recently she worked twelve hours a day in a garment factory and would always come home tired and not have time to go to the evening church prayer meetings. But now she has part-time work cleaning in the homes of three different expat Christian families doing less hours for better pay. ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ she said again. ‘Jesus helps me’, ‘I’m so glad to know people who love Jesus’.

There was something profoundly life-giving in Roon’s joy and gratitude. It was wonderful to be around. Roon came straight to mind when I later read, ‘I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people’. Isaiah 65:18b-19.

Joy, rest, hope, secure relationships and the removal of fear are all essential for a healthy, happy heart. They are elements of God’s recipe for restoration. These are also the very things that are missing in so many aspects of life in this country. Is it any wonder that mental illness is so widespread and a new generation is selfmedicating with anything they can find to dull the pain?

Roon is a reminder to me that even in the presence of the deepest wounds God’s word brings life, the Spirit brings freedom and love brings healing.

Humility

I had a rather humbling visit to the local market the other day.

Just that morning our Khmai lesson was on bargaining at the market. So full of confidence I set off on my ‘new to me’ bicycle to get a few things.

We were advised to always remain friendly and smile when bargaining. In my first encounter I fixed my face with the required silly grin and proceeded very enthusiastically to bargain the price up! The young sales girl, to her credit, could have simply agreed straight out and taken the extra money. She obviously felt embarrassed and sorry for me as I kept insisting on a higher price and eventually she said in English ‘just one and half dollar’. Momentarily confused I handed over the money and then realising how ridiculous I appeared, hurried off making a mental note never to shop at that stall again.

When I got to the vegetable stall the words I was confidently repeating in class totally escaped me and I found myself stammering and pointing, unable to name a single vegetable.

I must have appeared too eager to leave when retrieving my bike from the parking space and so the attendant, quite rudely I thought, tapped me on the shoulder and gruffly said ‘money’ in English. Stumbling with my load of vegetables I paid him the 300 riel (7.5 cents). Someone evidently saw my flustered state as I put my purse back into my bag and then into the basket of my bike. Less than a minute later as I was riding back home, I looked down to see that my bag was opened and the purse gone.

I had managed to make an idiot of myself at the market and then been the sucker who was an easy target for an observant pick pocket.

In this rather basic task of buying a few things at the market, I was anything but confident and in control. It was frustrating and embarrassing and made me feel like hiding at home.

When we are humbled some will take advantage of us and some will be kind or pity us. Neither is easy for our pride to take.

I came across this quote from Brother Lawrence.

‘When our conversation, our very relationship with God, matures to this level of understanding, we will thank Him with full gratitude for everything He has ever done to humble us. We will welcome whatever God may do to help bring our hearts into conformity with His heart.’

It would seem that I have a lot more maturing to do. I’m finding many of my current humbling experiences quite difficult and am often feeling less than thankful for them.

I’m not sure if all these humbling cross-cultural experiences are ‘bringing my heart more in conformity to God’s heart’ but I guess I can choose how I respond. I can get more and more frustrated and angry as if the cause for my discomfort is all external, a problem with others or this culture. I can bunker down or venture only into situations where I feel comfortable and in control. By associating only with those with whom I can communicate confidently it ensures I retain my image of competence and significance. I can turn the tables by refusing to speak my few words of Khmai and forcing others to use my language. In this way I can exert my power as a white, English speaking guest and demand service on my terms.

Or maybe it’s okay to not feel in control, to receive what others can teach me, to be the learner who inevitably makes mistakes. Maybe finding myself dependent and childlike is exactly where God’s transforming work in my heart is most likely to occur.

Strangers and Aliens

Here in Cambodia this last month we have once again found ourselves in a 'strange' situation. We don't yet speak the language, don't know where things are or how things are done and can't communicate enough to ask.

We have been setting up house pretty much from scratch as we brought very little with us from Australia. Buying household items is not just a matter of going to the nearest Westfield shopping centre where everything can be found in one location. These things seem to be spread around various markets or specialty shops and can be quite hard to find. Despite the inherent power that comes with our financial resources, education, help from other members of our team here and the advantage of being native English speakers we have at times felt the frustration and powerlessness of being foreign.

Tasks that are simple in my home situation become significantly more difficult. I've wanted to send some post card for weeks but so far have been prevented by unexpected hurdles. The postal system is not like in Australia. My investigations have revealed that there are no newsagents selling stamps, no red post boxes, no mailmen on motor scooters, no letterboxes in front of people's homes and no guarantee that the mail will get to the intended receiver. Apparently buying stamps, posting the card and receiving your mail all has to be done at the one central post office. But where exactly is the post office? What is the word for post office and how would I make the motorbike taxi or tuk tuk driver understand where it is I want to go?

Praise the Lord for email.

With days full of language study, trying to buy essential items that I often don't know where to find, heat, the demands of cultural adjustment and moving a family to a totally new home and environment, the challenge of a trip across town to locate the post office has been something I haven't had energy for as yet.

The inability to achieve some 'simple things' can be quite disempowering. I have felt out of control and very dependent on others. It's like being a child again.

This small taste of the vulnerability of being a stranger has reminded me again of what first motivated us to get involved with supporting refugees who came to settle in Adelaide. Twenty years ago we had our first significant experience of being foreign. We spent a month in Thailand doing a student placement in a leprosy hospital. We couldn't speak the language, often didn't know what was going on around us and felt incompetent and out of our depth. We started reflecting on how much more traumatic it must be for people who have been through unspeakable horrors and had to flee their homeland to come to a strange country where they know no one, can't communicate and are not even sure they are welcome. They need a local friend who can be an entry point into the new country so they are no longer strangers.

The scriptures have a lot to say about strangers and aliens. 'Do not oppress an alien. You yourselves know how it feels to be aliens because you were aliens in Egypt' (Ex 23:9); '....the alien mist be treated as one of your native born, love his as yourself.....for you were aliens in Egypt' (Lev 19:33.34); ' Do not deprive the aliens or fatherless of justice' (Deut 24:17). The prophets pronounced judgement on those who oppressed the aliens. They were often placed in the same category as widows and orphans, indicating they were seen as vulnerable. The Israelites had already tasted the powerlessness of being foreigners and so compassion for strangers in their land was expected.

I think empowering the vulnerable, turning strangers into friends and offering transforming hospitality is very close to God's heart. Isn't that what He does with all of us? God holds out His hands to us and invites us into His community transforming us from uncertain and insecure strangers into family.

May this current discomfort of being a stranger reignite in us God's welcoming compassion to all find themselves far from home.