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Today’s song title is about as simple as it can be just one word- war. I’m reminded of the war in Vietnam every day. The other day it was about 4 o clock in the morning however it can be at any time day or night cold weather or hot, sunshine or rain it doesn’t matter. There’s never a day that it doesn’t happen my next door neighbor stands outside by the road and yells at the top of her lungs and although she’s a very small woman her yells are clearly heard inside my house and my neighbors houses. My next door neighbor will sometimes set on his front porch and yell back at her making fun of her. This doesn’t stop her from yelling, in fact she will just yell louder. Why is my neighbor like this. Well she’s a Vietnamese lady in her sixties, which means she was a little girl back home in Vietnam when the war was going on. I believe my neighbors relives the horrors of her childhood everyday. A friend of Daddy’s come by the other day she was outside yelling and he asked “what’s wrong with that woman”? We told him she was Vietnamese and we don’t know what the poor woman went through during the war. He said that yeah that explains it.
Why do I have a woman from Vietnam living next door to me? That’s a story I’m going to talk about today. The reason why I have a Vietnamese neighbor is because in 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War there were millions of people fleeing Vietnam. Many thousands came to the United States as refugees. Now I’m making this up I always have music on while I’m writing I don’t like silence the song streaming as I stated to write this paragraph was Tom Petty’s Refugee! That would also be a great song for today’s story. I was in the eighth grade when over 100,000 refugees were settled through Fort Chaffee that borders my town, Fort Smith Arkansas. Did anyone catch that? As I have written before I live in Fort Smith, Arkansas the end of the Trail of Tears that Trump is so proud of placing a painting of Andrew Jackson the signer of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, in the Oval Office. And yet here we are 145 years later welcoming thousands of LEGAL refugees into our state! We had a toy drive at my Jr. high for the kids and those kids didn’t even speak English! My how times have changed!
President Trump signed an executive order allowing states governors to reject refugees in their state. The Governor of Texas said that Texas would refuse LEGAL refugees. Last Wednesday a Federal Judge in Maryland declared Trump’s executive order unconstitutional, so it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. There’s a reason why I’m singling out the governor of Texas who is attacking The Great Commission. My church I belong to, Rye Hill Baptist Church of Fort Smith is a church with a heart for missions. My church doesn’t just talk about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ we follow our talk with actions. Our church regularly has mission team that travel to Fort Worth Texas to minister to the people of the refugee resettlement in Fort Worth. If the Texas governor has his way there will be no more refugees in Fort Worth. They say we are a “Christian Nation” but it appears Texas is not a “Christian state”.
Matthew Chapter 28
18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
This passage is what is known as The Great Commission This is Jesus final instructions before his ascension into Heaven. It’s what all of his followers are suppose to do until his return which we Christians call the Second Coming of Christ. Yes The Great Commission is a very big deal to Christians. Of coarse Trump and the Texas governor would say “the Great What”?
Some may claim that The Great Commission is only about foreign missions, after all Jesus said GO. But here’s what I think the best answer to that is. It was a couple of months ago a missionary from Burma came to speak at our church. He was very hard to understand but if you listened closely this is what he said about his work sharing Jesus with the refuges from Burma. He said that the refuges from Burma was “God’s gift to the United States”. That’s right it’s God’s gift to our country, we don’t have to raise money to send a few missionaries halfway around the world God has brought them to us. Yes there’s no doubt about it refugees are a gift from God. The governor of Texas may not think so but rejecting a gift from God is a dangerous thing to do and it should end the political career of all the governors that reject the gift from God. Come election time Christians will not forget the attack they made on Christ and our Christian beliefs.