Maybe she can be free

MAYBE SHE CAN BE FREE
June 20 last was World Refugee Day. Have you ever thought about why people come here from other countries? Those who arrive with nothing, maybe not even a passport, and end up in “reception centres”, hostels, sometimes prison. Why would anyone want to leave their families and loved ones, their culture, country, all that helped them feel “at home” and come here, to a small island nation at the edge of the North Atlantic, to live dependent, sometimes for years, on meagre “hand-outs” from the State, and be forbidden to  work? Wouldn’t it have to be something extremely dire before any of us would do that?

When you think about refugees and the lives they are forced into, please remember what put them there…Most refugee troubles begin with anger and guns and scared people running. If we are talking about helping refugees, let us first talk of helping to keep people from BECOMING refugees.

Somewhere today there is a little girl who has a home in a troubled land. Maybe war will come there, maybe not. Maybe she will lose her home and her mother and all she knows. But maybe – if we focus on finding peace and removing guns from the hands of people who destroy life – maybe she will live in her home, with her own mother, and she will get to live her childhood – free”.

It’s not enough to help refugees when they come here, we must also ask how can we in our peaceful and comparatively wealthy countries work for peaceful and just conditions in troubled areas of the world.