I had just come from facilitating an IAFR training in Bosnia and was going to Greece to facilitate a second. As our plane took off, Eyal asked about my life work, and I shared that I work with an organization that serves the displaced.

I talked about the evidence I'd seen all around me of the lasting pain and hatred left by the Bosnian war in Sarajevo, where my IAFR colleagues work to welcome the more newly displaced from the wars and ongoing violence in the Middle East and Africa.

I shared the story of redemptive unity unfolding in the small churches in Sarajevo, with people from different sides of that divided city coming together in fellowship. Some of these, together with Christians from all over the world – Europe and North and South America – have joined local Christians now in service to the displaced foreigners in Bosnia.

Horrors of Auschwitz

"What drives your strength of belief in hospitality to strangers?" Eyal asked curiously.

"I believe that God deeply loves forcibly displaced people," I said simply.

"I find it hard to believe in God," Eyal admitted. His dark eyes took on a faraway look. "My parents both survived the holocaust and the horrors of Auschwitz. My parents were really open about their suffering as I was growing up. When I think about their stories of pain and the evil that caused it..." I could hear the pain in his voice, and my heart broke for his family's history of fracturing displacement.

We talked about the scars that displacement can leave for generations.

If I didn't believe in a day...

And then, as the plane landed, Eyal asked his startling question about hope.

"If I didn't believe in a day when everything will be set right, I wouldn't have hope," I told him. "But I believe God is actively engaged in our world and has promised evil, suffering, and death are not going to have the last word. Have you read the prophecies in Isaiah?"

"The Messianic ones?" He nodded.

"Yes, I believe those are real," I said.

The Church as a Community of Hope

"You have both devastated and fascinated me today." Eyal smiled. "You've given me a lot to ponder."

As I deplaned, I prayed God would use our conversation to draw Eyal to God's hope, just as he'd been drawn to the church's story as a community of hope and welcome among the displaced.

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