Our Fellow Humans

“But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given You. For we are sojourners before You, and tenants, as all our fathers were” — King David

By most accounts, Joshua Wheeler got into the fight that took his life to save the lives of people he barely knew. Seventy people were locked up in an ISIS compound. Christians, about to be executed for their faith.

In his capacity as an “advisor” Master Sargent Wheeler was supposed to be a spectator, but as he and his companions saw the mission going south, as they realized the lives that were at stake, they jumped in and turned the tide, freeing dozens of people and sparing the lives of many Kurdish fighters.

Yet I hear some on the right and the left asking “was it worth it?” While the American populace wrings our hands of the crisis in the Levant, heroes like Joshua Wheeler are laying it all out for the sake of their fellow man.
We see images of people dying and suffering and trying to cross the seas for a better life, for a chance at having a life at all. Syrian refugees fleeing certain death or an uncertain future cling to rafts or climb on top of trains to get to Europe.

Germany has accepted over one million refugees from war-torn Syria and similar conflicts in just the past year. This has strained Germany’s resources and divided its people.

So ask yourself …

What would you do if your world was upended?

What would you have us do?

Would you want us to walk by and pretend this isn’t happening to you?

Who is our brother? If it is not the stranger in deepest need?

To be sure, there are plenty of issues on both sides of this debate, but don’t we all need to take an interest in the stranger in need? Don’t we all need to pause for a moment and say a prayer?

Regardless of who a man worships, there is only one God. Jesus is not the Son of the Christian God, He is the Son of the only true God (whom true Christians worship), He is the Savior for all mankind. If He had not come to shed light for the pagan nations, I would not be His follower now.

We need not fear the followers of Islam. We need to show them Jesus. I am grateful that Germany, the country we are going to, has decided to open its arms to the down and out, even though it costs it dearly.

Joshua Wheeler faced death and chose love over fear. In the West, and in the U.S. especially, we don’t even face death at the hands of jihadis, and yet we choose fear and hatred. We allow our fears of “creeping Sharia law and Islamo-facism” to quench our need to be good Samaritans.

I do not know how long this battle in Syria and Iraq will go on. I cannot fathom the overwhelming pressures faced by the refugees and those who are on the ground protecting and caring for them. But my prayers are with them. My heart is with them. And God willing, we will see some of them in Berlin and we will cry with them.