Her eyes staring into space, hands up in the air, and scared look on her face is the picture of the 3 yr. old Syrian refugee girl I can’t get out of my mind. The person in front of her was taking a picture, but instead she thought they were taking out a gun to shoot her and she raised her hands in surrender. Now go back about 70 years and remember Time magazine pictures of children in concentration camps hoarded into gas chambers or lined up and shot into ditches. What is different from these two scenes? My answer is a different era, but not much else has changed.

As a mother of a 5 year old, these incidents literally effect me so violently my insides seem to creak all around me. I can’t breathe, eat, or sleep when I actually let myself acknowledge the truth of what happened and what is happening. The crazy part is many people ask how can this happen – why didn’t people stand up and stop the atrocities from World War II? My question is what are we doing now to stop the violence and those who are suffering? Most likely your family is exactly like the typical household during World War II – either you want to move on with your regular life and pretend the world atrocities are a myth since the gunfire is not directly outside your door, you don’t personally feel effected by what’s happening so why do you care, you live in fear and don’t want to be the one who stands up, or you have bought into the stereotype all Syrians are terrorists and to assist them is like setting off a time bomb.

The question is what would Jesus do? My guess is he would do what he did before; which was to spend time with the people we want to run from – the prostitutes, the beggars, the tax collectors, the dictators, etc. He would spend time healing instead of walking away. Many people’s response is why concentrate on what Jesus did if he did not eradicate evil? There are still shootings, war, terrorism , etc., so, why open up our borders to evil? My response is we can either buy into the myths of terror or find good in the midst of evil. My belief is there are still people who are saints and people who are the devil. It is our decision to choose what side we are on no matter the circumstance. God never said life on Earth would be easy. What he did say was we should follow our purpose and his lead. He said our goal is to live in his image; which, as we learned as children, means do onto others as we would like done onto us. If I was unfortunate to be born in Syria and to have a child, my hope is someone would be kind enough to want to rescue me and my child from the violence outside my door. My hope would not to be judged, stereotyped, or persecuted solely for where I was born. As we found out in World War II and now are reliving – you can’t identify a whole group of people the same no matter their religion, heritage, etc.. Back in his time, my dad’s father was an immigrant and one of the best people I knew. If we said because he grew up poor it would mean he would come to the United States and amount to nothing – we would have made a terrible judgment on a man who worked very hard most of his life. The same goes for the people of Syria. Sure, there will be people from Syria where pain, suffering, and anger rule their hearts, but there will also be others who are grateful and who will be law-abiding and fruitful with the opportunity for a new start to life. It is our job not to walk away, but to help the broken, misguided, and those who are suffering. If we are wondering why it should be America’s job to save the world, I don’t consider it a certain country’s job as much as it is human kind’s job to help the dying, the orphans, the widows, the war-torn, and the broken-hearted. We need to not only focus on our little section of the world, but to think what it is like to fit into someone else’s shoes. Think about it – what would the shoes be like for the mother who is starving, scared, and helpless? I am guessing it would be heart-breaking and awful. In my opinion, it is all of our responsibilities to visit memorials such as the Oklahoma bombing, the Holocaust museum, and the Twin Towers, so, we don’t forget and we don’t use ignorance as a crutch every time evil pops up its ugly head. We need to remind ourselves what evil can bring, so, we can understand what it will take to bring peace, goodness, and joy onto this earth. Sure, evil has its own power and there is always the risk of being caught in the middle of evil (ex. a Syrian refugee wanting to go on a shooting spree), but our answer should be to not buy into what is wrong just because we don’t have big enough faith to do what is right.