Rest for Refugees

Photo: The Traiskirchen Refugee Processing facility AKA The Camp

Last night was my first night at the Oasis since coming back to Austria. It was good to finally go down there again. The meeting was packed out. I’m a bad judge when it comes to numbers, but I would say a capacity crowd for the room would be 80-100 and we got to that pretty quickly. Of course that’s a small fraction of how many are actually at the camp. Right now there are between 4-5,000 refugees in the facility. That is over 3 times the maximum capacity! Many are there sleeping outside and they have stopped taking in refugees and are hoping to send some of them to facilities in other countries. Nobody else seems to have room either. The amount of refugees this summer is truly unmatched by any other year in record. 

They asked me to prepare a message. I was inspired by Mike Grifis’ sermon on Jesus’ call to come to Him to receive rest by taking his yoke and learning from him in Matthew 11:28-30. 5,000 weary and heavy laden who leave everything behind because of fear, fighting their way through many perils in order to come to a place that has no room for you. Many because of their religious background, like those under the Pharisees of Jesus’ day, are also heavy laden with fear. They fear that they can never be certain they have done enough  in order to please God and gain acceptance from Him. I could think of no better message than Christs’ offer of rest if we come to him, become his servant and learn his ways. Rest for our souls that even in the circumstances of leaving behind family and friends, letting go of all that is familiar and embracing uncertainty to sleep out in the elements with 5,000 others. I pray that these men and women would find Christs’ rest. I pray also that we his servants, would daily embrace it.

#fa #blog

from Activity in The Plaza for Denton Bible Church http://bit.ly/1gienMo
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