The Refugee Crisis

Over 100 million people are currently displaced worldwide — fleeing war, poverty, persecution, or environmental collapse. The policy debates are complex. The human reality is not.

The Bible was written largely by displaced people, about displaced people, and for displaced people. Immigration and exile are not peripheral themes in Scripture. They are central.

Before Jesus could walk, his family fled their country. Matthew 2 records that Joseph took Mary and the infant to Egypt because King Herod was systematically killing children to eliminate a perceived threat.

The Son of God entered the world as a displaced child — not in a palace, not in a position of power, but as a refugee whose parents fled in the night. That is not incidental. It is theological. God chose to identify with the displaced from the very beginning.

Leviticus 19 is unambiguous: "When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt."

This is not a suggestion. It is Law. And God tied it directly to Israel's own memory — "you were foreigners too." The command is rooted in empathy born from shared experience.

Ruth was a Moabite — a foreigner from a nation Israel viewed with suspicion. She left everything to follow her mother-in-law Naomi to a country that was not her own.

God did not merely include her. He placed her in the direct ancestral line of Jesus. Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David and an ancestor of the Messiah. The plan to save the world ran through an immigrant woman. That is not coincidence. It is a statement about who God values.

Hebrews 13 contains a striking instruction: "Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it."

Scripture takes the welcoming of strangers so seriously that it suggests you may be encountering heaven's own messengers without realizing it. Hospitality is not just kindness — it is a channel through which God works.

In Matthew 25, Jesus described the final Judgment in deeply personal terms. Among his criteria: "I was a stranger and you invited me in." He identifies himself with the displaced.

When you welcome a displaced person, Jesus says you are welcoming him. When you turn them away, you are turning him away. That is not a political statement. It is a direct claim from Jesus about where he positions himself.

The policy questions are genuinely complex. The Bible acknowledges that. But the posture is clear: compassion, not contempt. Hospitality, not hostility. See the image of God in every person, regardless of where they are from or how they arrived.