A Reflection by John Wilson
Volunteer Services Supervisor
A Season of Change
Almost five years ago my family and I uprooted our lives and relocated to NW Arkansas. We left family, the church I had pastored in for 29 years, and the slow-growing relationships nurtured over decades. COVID made the transition even harder. It’s almost impossible to build new relationships when everyone is keeping distance, faces hidden behind masks!
We’d never felt so alone.
The previous year had been an extended crisis. Suddenly I was feeling all the wounds that had been easy to ignore through adrenaline and momentum. And we were alone. People around us lived their lives at the speed of normal, while we struggled to feel anything close to normal.
Finally there was someone who saw us. They slowed, stopped, and embraced us. And then a few more came along. Soon we had “our people”, the community that lamented with us, and eventually laughed with us.
It was during this season that I had my first encounter with refugees. While working in corporate recruiting, someone from Canopy NWA, a local resettlement agency, reached out to me. She was helping newly arrived refugees find jobs. For the next year this work became increasingly important to me, and for the first time I began to see a group of people that I had always looked away from.
“I learned the power of being seen.”
I learned the power of being seen. We’ve had our tough seasons, but I (we) had never before been alone. I’d not known that sense of being on the outside, on the margin, invisible to everyone who was stable and secure.
God’s Heart for the Sojourner
Depending on the translation, the Bible refers to this displaced group of people with words like sojourners, foreigners, or strangers. The implication was that they weren’t just travelers. In the ancient world, there were essentially two forms of wealth: land and family. Rather than money and possessions, these two things brought stability and security. People typically lived their whole lives on the same land that their ancestors did, and lived with ever growing extended families. To leave land and family, going to a strange land with unknown people, was incredibly vulnerable.
Like He did for the widow, orphan, and the poor, God made provision for the sojourner. God intended His people’s strength and stability to provide that provision. Again and again, God gave Israel instructions on how to take care of the sojourner. “Love them, remembering that you were sojourners in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:19) “Treat them as a native born.” (Leviticus 19:33-34) “Leave the edges of your fields unharvested for them.” (Leviticus 23:22)
Scripture instructs more than 90 times exactly how God’s people should treat the sojourner.” He commanded it of His people, and He held them accountable when they drifted. But here’s the point we can’t miss: God wasn’t just laying out the blueprint for a society. In these commands, He was revealing His own heart. God cares for the vulnerable and sees the unseen. He is with the weak, the brokenhearted, and the vulnerable–and He calls us to join Him there.
Learning to See
Jesus said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” He’s the express image of God, the perfect revelation of His heart and character. And when He came to us, who was He looking for? The vulnerable. The broken. The unseen. The lost. When asked, ‘Who is my neighbor?’, He told the story of a man who interrupted and inconvenienced his own life to help a stranger in need.
I have studied and taught from Scripture for years. But somehow these exhortations to take care of the sojourner–the refugee–just didn’t catch my attention. If the Quartet of the Vulnerable included widows, orphans, the sojourner, and the poor, I had overlooked 25%.
Called to Welcome
Two and a half years ago I left that corporate job and started to work at Canopy NWA. Since then I’ve been a part of welcoming hundreds of refugees into our community. This work is as meaningful to me as the decades I’ve spent pastoring; welcoming the stranger and embracing the vulnerable is Kingdom of God work that transcends the secular/sacred boundaries we create.
And there’s something more. Modern-day sojourners arrive vulnerable, seeking to be seen and welcomed, yet they quickly step beyond that place of need. These are people who have endured and overcome hardships we can’t even imagine. They bring their dreams and they are ready to build. If we are willing to welcome them into our community, together we gain. In fact, I believe that God, through our new neighbors, is helping us return to precious things we’ve forgotten. Hospitality. Family. Community. Sacrifice. Hard work. Resilience.
I could never have imagined, five years ago, that I’d be working in refugee resettlement. But in this work, with its joy, sorrow, messiness, and triumphs, I’ve seen amazing, beautiful people, and I’ve seen the God who loves them.
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