In a dusty middle eastern country, in this current millenium, I found myself riding in an untrustworthy van going to . . . well, to where, I had absolutely no idea whatsoever!  There’s a certain exhilarating fear when you are a ‘guest’ in these types of situations.  When you don’t have a clue where you are or how to get home, riding on streets with no street names in any language, with the overhead sun in a cloudless sky as your only compass.  Wait though, let’s come back to reality.  I am in this untrustworthy van as I described above, but with 7 other souls whose hearts beat like mine to find refugees who have physical, emotional and spiritual needs that we actually believe we can help provide some solutions to.  These moments are some of the most fulfilling in life, moments we are wired to live, that hit something deep in our spiritual DNA and give us that awareness that this is part of something we are created to do.  That the uncertainty of that moment is actually 1,000% normal in the Kingdom of God and a million times more ‘normal’ than all of the other minutiae of our lives. (of course, it took a fair amount of minutiae to help me organize this trip)

There’s a certain sound of plastic canvas flapping in the wind that I have come to associate with days like I’m describing.  UNHCR canvas, to be exact.  The white background with the blue UNHCR emblem that is given to some refugees to make tents which sometimes regrettably become homes as the refugees discover there are no easy political solutions.

Wikipedia defines the UNHCR as: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is a UN agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country.

Lives are built in these tents and babies are born in these tents.  I wonder if whoever designed the blue logo for the UNHCR envisioned that it would become part of the home interior design for hundreds of thousands of refugees.  I wonder, do housewives try to find blue pillows for their bed-couches so it matches a bit?  Or do they end up hating blue, and choose green or yellow pillows, because blue has become a sign of their captivity and powerlessness?

As I was preparing for this day, I felt the Holy Spirit strongly impress on me that I was to offer to pray for them, specifically for physical healing.  I believe in prayer for physical healing, so I began to pray and ask God to prepare me to represent him to my new friends I hadn’t yet met.

Our untrustworthy van arrived at our destination, a tent-home in a field. I looked to the right and saw a small UNHCR plastic canvas latrine, which was a small hole in the ground.

My attention turned to the tent-home we were going to enter.  A family of 14 lived here.  Plastic UNHCR canvas flapping in the wind.  Home sweet home.  Children for whom, whenever they found a new place to move to, a new country, or their old country, would probably would actually cry because this was the only home they ever knew.

As our group entered the tent-home, we were greeted by warm, friendly people, so very happy we had found them, and that we took the time to visit.  We sat on the perimeter mattress-couches.  We heard their story.  There’s a classic storyline to most every refugee story.  It goes like this:  Something really bad and scary had happened to make them walk away from a lifetime of everything they knew.   That’s the story.  Again and again, x millions.

What I have found with refugees is that they love telling their stories to someone new, someone who hasn’t suffered as they have and lost everything.  I believe that somehow they find a bit of hope as they look into our eyes, the non-refugees, and see our sympathy, sadness and sometimes tears.  I think it reminds them of how they might have heard and they themselves responded to a story like their own, before they actually lived it.

I began to feel this gnawing in my stomach, as I confronted my own fear to pray for these people.  At one point I was begging God to change his mind.

As our visit came to a close, we were starting to stand up and leave.  That moment of starting to stand up felt like slow motion in a movie, and seemed like forever.  I asked our translator to ask them if anyone wanted prayer for healing.  They said yes.  These precious, other-sons-of-Abraham began to walk toward me.  7 or 8 of them.  Their dusty brown faces and shining eyes filled with hope.  The children gathered.  My knees were knocking under the culturally sensitive and relevant clothing I was wearing.

I asked them what the problem was, and they said one of their sons was deaf, and pointed him out.  I asked him to step forward.  He did.  His smiling dusty brown face with hopeful shining eyes walked toward me.  I began to pray for healing.  I honestly can’t remember what I prayed as I write this, but I prayed in faith.

I finished praying, and they thanked us profusely.  I had tears in my eyes, and those tears turned into a silent river that continued as we drove away in the untrustworthy van.  I have no idea if he was ever healed.  But I was.

So here’s the moral of this story.  They said yes to receive prayer for healing.  Will you say yes?  Will you say yes to God to be the conduit?

There are people everywhere who need someone like you to say yes.  There are refugees everywhere who need someone like you to say yes.  Find them and say yes.

You need someone like you to say yes, because in your saying yes you find spiritual fulfillment that can only come when YOU say YES.

They said yes.  Will you?