Thought for the week

EVER have one of those weeks where a few seemingly unrelated things come together and you see something differently? A recent sermon in church was based on the beginning of Acts 3, where Peter heals the lame beggar. Describing this, the Bible says “Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up”. That’s “by the right hand”, notice, not just ‘by the hand’. Why so specific, I wondered?

This last weekend was also our new Minister’s induction service, part of which involved ‘extending the right hand of fellowship’ to him. Watching church leaders hold out their right hands to shake the new Minister’s hand, something clicked. The right hand is the hand of friendship, of fellowship, of acceptance into a community.

When Peter held out his right hand to the beggar, he was saying “I accept you” to someone who, until then, probably wasn’t seen by most as a human being, but as something ‘other,’ an outsider, ignored or treated as an object of pity.

And then I saw that 20 June was World Refugee Day.

With the Government’s planned policy to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda in the news, it struck me that our views of refugees must be a bit like society’s view of the lame beggar in Peter’s time.

Instead of seeing refugees as ‘like us,’ as real people, each different, each with their own stories, hopes and dreams, we view them as ‘other,’ either as invaders who threaten our identity and burden our society, or as helpless victims.

Perhaps one thing we could learn from Peter’s example is that healing the trauma of being an outsider only begins when we extend the right hand of fellowship.