The UK Prime Minister called it a swarm others a migration as refugees, attracted by the relative stability and prosperity of Europe, headed west.

They form two broad categories; economic migrants and asylum seekers.

The plan is to repatriate the former and allow the latter to remain.

This plan is contested by some European states the most vocal of which is Hungary. Their Prime Minister played the religion card when he said Hungary would only take Christians not Muslims! He has belatedly discovered that Europe’s identity is rooted in Christianity a fact that has been noticeably absent from the EC’s recent laws! Why has he gone there?

It has been said that the Old Testament is the last refuge of a rogue!

Perhaps the Hungarians are aligning themselves to God’s desire for purity in Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 7 verses 1/11)? This was a purity that eluded them despite Joshua’s farewell speech pleading for separation from the peoples of the land, their practices and their gods (Joshua 23 verses 7/13). Something has to account for the miles of razor wire now surrounding Hungary’s borders.

God’s desire was always that through Abraham’s seed “all families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12 verse 3). That blessing came through Jesus (Galatians 3 verse 16) so that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Let’s look to the day when the barriers and razor wire, that we so readily erect to protect our little corner from the ‘other’, are made obsolete by a uniting faith in Christ.

Instead to trying to keep refugees out, we should be inventing ways to receive them and engage them in worthwhile work.

Our current travesty of shutting refugees up in hostels on €19.00 per week is pathetic. Perhaps it will take the present crisis to do what countless reports have failed to do and that is to show respect to those who have come to our land for refuge.

Could God’s hand be in all this? In the main refugees come from countries where Gospel works are hampered by the imprisonment or execution of missionaries. Perhaps the Lord is sending them to us so that we don’t have to go to them! Perhaps the love and compassion we show to them will be the catalyst that will make the refugee want to know the Jesus who has transformed our lives?

Listen to St Paul, who came from a position of great scholarship and a promising career, as he testifies to his new life in Christ. “Whatever I had I counted loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Philippians 3 verses 7/8).

Let’s pray that great good will come out of the current debacle.