Article June 27, 2016 Issue

A mother’s prayer for refugees

Susan Booth Mack Snipes

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 2016.

“I just want to know what to do.” These were the words of a Syrian woman who had just come to Greece only to find that the border had been closed. My heart welled up within me. I too had uttered those very words on a number of occasions, and as I began to pray about the refugee crisis, I was reminded of a time in my own life when I had earnestly prayed and God had answered my plea for guidance.

I had come to know God as a tender Shepherd who guides, guards, and provides for us.

It was when my husband suddenly passed on that I yearned most deeply to know what to do next. I was unemployed, had a mortgage on an old house that we were renovating, and had two preschool-aged children to care for. But in spite of all the uncertainty, there was something that remained constant: a sense of God’s mothering-fathering love, which I had learned to trust and lean on during my childhood. I had come to know God as a tender Shepherd who guides, guards, and provides for us, the sheep of His pasture. The 23rd Psalm describes it this way: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters” (verses 1, 2). The whole psalm was so reassuring! It promised me that God would guide me right through this valley experience, and that we would be protected and sustained.

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