We’re on the move.  Our house is full of half packed boxes, piles for the charity shop and bags destined for the dump.  After 14 years we are upping sticks, leaving the St Albans area and moving to the wilds of Bedfordshire.  Or rather, just up the M1 to the parish of Flitwick.

I know the church will give us a warm welcome, and my role as vicar means I‘ll soon get to know all sorts of people. Still, the move is unsettling. Where is the nearest place to buy tea bags? Who will I call when the boiler breaks down?

Imagine if there was no choice but to move.  To leave everything we own. Every person we know. To escape with only our lives and the clothes we wear.  To forge a new life amongst people who don’t want to know us.  This is the reality for many families as they cross the Mediterranean from North Africa.  What is the difference between my move to Bedfordshire and theirs to Europe? Those migrants and my family are both aliens in a strange land. Yet the way we are received is a world apart. The distance travelled changes the perspective.

Jesus shows us that all people are the same in God’s eyes. Every person, whether their journey starts in Hertfordshire or Syria, has equal dignity, equal worth.  Each human being is precious, and their life is of infinite value.

If we stop seeing individuals and only see problems, we become less human ourselves.

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