Waiting

This week I've been thinking about waiting. So many of my friends and family are in seasons of waiting. Waiting for job security, waiting for babies, waiting for house moves, waiting for illnesses to be cured. Waiting will always be a part of our lives, and it can be incredibly hard to deal with. But for most of us, we know that there will be an end to the wait. The outcome may not be what we had hoped for, but there will be an outcome. We will get an answer of sorts. And we tend to have options that we can consider and make informed choices about.

For so many of the people that I am working with, and for others around the world this is not the case. There is no end in sight to their displacement. There is a whole generation of people who are being born in to displacement, and growing up with no experience of anything else. They live their lives in perpetual waiting. Waiting for someone to provide them with food. Waiting for water to be delivered. Waiting for an opportunity to earn a small income. Waiting for a school to open with a curriculum in their language. Waiting for their homes to be safe enough to return to, or for to receive asylum in a new country. They are powerless in their own struggle and that is one of the most hopeless parts of this. Their suffering is not of their own making, and there are no options for them. I can't tell you the number of conversations I have with displaced people which include an element of them asking for my help - help with day to day things yes, but also help on a much larger scale - can I manage to get their girls back who have been kidnapped? Can I request more international military intervention? Can I influence the UN?

When you have no voice, you are at the mercy of other's who do have a voice to speak for you. And in the meantime you get used to waiting. There is no other choice available to you. It's a struggle to bring any kind of hope in to those situations. Platitudes are pretty empty to families who have lost so, so much. All we can do is take our ability to have influence seriously in the way we live our lives. Don't squander your voice.
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