Yesterday my mom wrote a comment on my post that is worthy of a space of its own. Here it is:
From my mom – Pauline Brown:
I recently read the story told by a Vietnamese American woman. Her grandparents, her mother and two aunts escaped as Saigon was falling. The woman had worked for the American Embassy, but in the end was abandoned. They had to get out because of the American connection.
The three girls were separated from their parents, neither daughters nor parents knowing if the others had gotten out alive as they all saw one of the last helicopters shot down in flames. They miraculously found each other on Guam amongst the thousands of other refugees. As a child she and her cousins loved to hear the story of what she called their Exodus from Vietnam.
But the other part of the story is that there was a little Baptist Church in Lafayette, Indiana whose people had decided that they should sponsor a Vietnamese refugee family.
Far away, at a small Baptist church in Indiana, some Christians were convinced that God’s heart was for those whom nobody wanted.
They were praying for that family long before they ever saw them. They met them with a furnished apartment, Doctor’s appointments, clothes, all the practical help they needed, and such love as they had never experienced. At the end of the article she says this:
“This is also my story. I grew up knowing that I existed because somewhere in the world, a group of people believed that God was asking them to show mercy to those who needed it. I grew up knowing that this sort of a God is a God worth trusting. His mercy echoes down through the generations.”
And I thought to myself, “What if every church in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and all the countries of western Europe each sponsored a refugee family? I wonder how much of a difference that would make for the millions fleeing.”
It might be a small dent in the total, but how much it would mean to each of those families! And His mercy would continue to echo down through the generations.
May God help each of us to do what little we can to show His love and compassion to these desperate people He loves.
Story and quote credits to Juliet Liu Waite, Christianity Today December 2015, titled “The Waters of My Family’s Exodus.”