World Refugee Day Reflection
Written by Sharon Hughes
My Eritrean friend ushered me to a folding chair inside the packed apartment. Within seconds, she set a paper plate in my hands, filled with injera, (a traditional bread), steaming spiced lentils and stewed lamb. As the flavors charged my mouth, I scanned the room and saw the guest of honor-Tirhas, who was dressed in a long white dress, with a purple cap and gown. Everyone in attendance was gathered to celebrate her high school graduation.
Tirhas came to Cleveland as a refugee from Eritrea. She left her country as a young child and lived in a refugee camp in Ethiopia for seven years. After being separated from her mom for fifteen years total, they were reunited at Cleveland Hopkins airport in 2021. Tirhas came to The Hope Center a week later and was soon enrolled at Lakewood High School.
Here she was two and a half years later, surrounded by her mom and sister, and at least thirty people from the Eritrean Christian community. I watched as people walked around flashing big white smiles and greeting one another with a kiss on the cheek. I couldn’t understand anyone, as Amharic and Tigringa (Ethiopian and Eritrean languages) were flying in all directions, but I could sense the warmth, joy and strength of each word.
Older women stood up to give blessings-each one bearing their own story of resilience against all odds. Out of nowhere, songs broke out and hands lifted to heaven while the local priest prayed over Tirhas. As this continued for over an hour, Tirhas’s mom walked around with freshly roasted coffee, literally a burnt offering for all her guests who came to celebrate her daughter.
I was clearly an outsider. However, I had been invited into a sacred and communal gathering of Eritrean Christians, many of whom were refugees or former refugees. And because I couldn’t join in fully due to language barriers I had the honor to observe this beloved community in action. For a few moments I leaned back and took it all in, and came to the conclusion that I was witnessing a small piece of heaven on earth.
These Eritrean Christians surrounded one another with love and inclusion in the face of decades of displacement. They feasted while remembering they once didn’t know where their next meal would come from. They gave one another blessings of peace and joy knowing full well the dark reality of violence and war. They worshiped God together, raising their voices louder than the sorrow of their collective experience. They demonstrated faith and hope that certainly transcended the current legal status of “refugee.”
On June 20th, we all have the opportunity to celebrate World Refugee Day, a day to honor people from around the world who have been forced to flee their homes due to war and persecution. It is a day to champion the right to seek safety and advocate for social, economic and political inclusion for all. As the world grapples with the highest level of human displacement across borders in human history, World Refugee Day is vital and important.
As Christians, we are called to embody welcoming the foreigner and the stranger (Leviticus 19:34) and to demonstrate hospitality, a fundamental practice dating back to the earliest church gatherings. Just as God has been a refuge to us throughout generations, we are to be a refuge to one another. But what if refugee Christians are the ones to lead the way in this effort?
As I sipped my last drop of black coffee and was about to leave, I met an Eritrean woman who had just arrived in Cleveland as a refugee. As she waited for years in an Ethiopian refugee camp, she told me she prayed for Christians in the United States. She prayed that they would know and experience the love of God. She was confident of her calling, despite being a refugee herself. And while she might not have known it, her first recipient of God’s gift of love was to me.
As I reflect on World Refugee Day, I am convinced that North American Christians aiming to live out their calling to love and bless refugees is tied to letting refugees love and bless them. In fact, refugees can lead the way in demonstrating what it means to be the Church God intends us to be. Why? Because refugees have lived through displacement and horrors beyond what many can imagine yet have kept the faith. Much like Jesus, in the face of unfathomable circumstances they have continued to worship, serve, pray and feast together.
My prayer is that on World Refugee day, we see the plight of refugees and draw close to their personhood and stories. We do this not merely to love, serve and welcome but to be loved, served and welcomed as a mutual blessing from God. Furthermore, my prayer is that on World Refugee Day, North American Christians look to the Christian refugee community, and see the ways God is at work in and through them-giving us all a tangible redemptive picture of what ushering in the kingdom of God could look like. World Refugee Day is an invitation to witness a piece of heaven on earth.
