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RSSWith Only the Clothes on Their Backs
by The Rev. Barbara Cawthorne
11/30/2007
Advent I Year A
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Psalm 122
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. -- Isaiah 2:4
We read about Burma in the paper all the time -- we're never quite sure whether to call it Burma or Myanmar, its new name under the military dictatorship which has governed the country for thirty years. The Nobel Peace prize has been awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi, the courageous leader of the country's democratic opposition: she has been under house arrest for twenty years. Her life and the lives of many in Burma are permanently in danger in what amounts to a low-level civil war; thousands have died, especially among the country's ethnic minorities. More than 150,000 Burmese have been driven from their homes, settling in refugee camps across the border in Thailand, with more arriving every day as the unrest worsens. They reach the camps with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
This passage from the prophet Isaiah is very old. In it, we read of a dream still unrealized, these thousands of years later: a time when the machinery of war will be turned to purposes of peace. There won't be refugees. People won't be driven out from their homes and killed. Three thousand years after this prophetic longing was first written down, it's still a dream.
Through Episcopal Relief and Development’s support of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, people arriving at the refugee camps receive critical emergency aid. Because families arrive at the camps without possessions, a “New Arrivals Pack” has been created to meet immediate and basic needs. The pack contains blankets, mosquito nets, sleeping mats, cooking pots and utensils and food containers. Episcopal Relief and Development is committed to supplying packs to 455 families, or 2,275 refugees.
Until peace is more than a dream, we all have work to do with those who are caught in the crossfire of war. To live in freedom is a great blessing; those of us who enjoy it must pray with love for those who do not. If we do that, God puts it into our hearts to incarnate our prayer in action.
