From reunion…to reconciliation

‘Daniel ran towards me, his eyes filled with tears. We hugged warmly, as close friends do when they haven’t seen each other for two years. Then I stepped aside. Behind me were Daniel’s wife and two sons. It had been almost three years since he last saw them, waving goodbye as he left the refugee camp which had been their home for eight years. Finally they were reunited, clinging to each other, never wanting to let go again. 

When I met Daniel he was sleeping rough, starving and on the point of suicide. As a family we shared our food with him, bought him clothes and toiletries, and a week before the first COVID-19 lockdown, got him into a safe house. He could not understand why we troubled ourselves to help him. I told him that anything we did for him was but a pale imitation of the lavish, relentless love of God as revealed in the Bible. Daniel asked for a Bible and read it again and again during those long lockdown months. Then he had a dream of Jesus, and later he was baptised.  By that time my family and I had left South East Asia, and we watched it on a WhatsApp video. 

Trapped

His wife and sons remained stuck in the refugee camp, imprisoned by its barbed wire and by pandemic travel restrictions. Daniel’s sons had never seen electric light before, had never slept in a bed, had never seen a tree, grass, a single flower. When borders finally opened, I flew out to the Middle East to meet them. Daniel’s wife was overwhelmed: with gratitude at the chance to see her husband, with bitterness at a wasted decade in the camp, with futile fury at the civil war that had engulfed their homeland. We flew to South East Asia, their first time in an aeroplane, and walked out of the terminal to meet Daniel.’  ~ shared by Matt, an Interserve Partner 

A happy ending to a difficult story? Not yet.

Daniel’s wife sees her husband’s new faith as a betrayal of their culture, and she is angry. She continues to weep for the injustice of war and is haunted by memories of their neighbours being blasted into fragments, forcing the desperate family to flee across the desert. God longs to be reconciled to her, His relentless love will not give up. This emotional reunion was just the first step in His plan of reconciliation for this family. 

God’s global family has been given, through Christ, the ministry of reconciliation. The Interserve community depends on His provision and on your partnership. Will you help to create opportunities for this vital work of reconciling precious people like Daniel and his family to their Creator? Like you, we long for the many who are suffering brokenness, trauma and displacement to experience the gifts of peace, joy and forgiveness that Jesus freely offers.  

Will you join us this Christmas in seeing lives transformed by and reconciled to Christ, one at a time?

Why not share this opportunity to bless and encourage those in great need of Jesus with others in your church, family and community? Is your church looking for a cause to support this Christmas?