20th May 2022
Tyndale has begun to establish a link with the First Baptist Church in Wroclaw, Poland, helping to support them in looking after refugees who have fled across the border from the war in Ukraine. There are upwards of 26 million such refugees worldwide, half of whom are children. Add to that those still within their own country, but who have been forced to leave their homes because of natural disaster, persecution, conflict, human rights violation – and the total number of displaced persons globally exceeds 82 million. Each one of them is not ‘at home’ tonight; will not sleep in their own bed; will not wake tomorrow to their own shop, school, place of work, club, or meet with familiar neighbours. Most will have no prospect of returning home in the near future, and will have to find a home for their heart in a strange place, in an alien land, at least for a time, maybe for ever.
I heard in an interview on radio yesterday: “Home is where the heart is – but what if the heart has no home?” Even when we are ‘home’, we may not be at ease; we may long for something more; we may feel restless and unfulfilled?
In his ‘Confessions’, St Augustine says, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. So, if we are at one with God, in a very real sense, it is possible to feel at home, wherever we might be.
David Bell