Born somewhere between Taiz and Aden

One · What happened

A war most of us did not know had come back

Yemen slid back into open war in July, and in early September the fighting flared again in Taiz and along the west coast. Whole districts in Taiz emptied. On 11 September the UN's migration agency, IOM, counted forty-six thousand people displaced in about a week. A week later it was a hundred twelve thousand. By 21 September, according to the UN, it was close to one hundred thirty thousand, most of them in Taiz and Lahj, with more than three thousand people crossing the sea to Djibouti in boats.

The sides are the Houthi movement in the north and the government forces backed by Saudi Arabia, with Houthi missiles now reaching Saudi cities. Who bears the blame, and what the United States or anyone else ought to do about it, is a long argument with serious people on several sides. The mothers in the shelters have other things on their minds this week.

Two · What it is doing

Thankful, and then done

Think back to the week your first child was born, if you have one. The bag packed by the door for a month, and the route to the hospital that you drove twice just to be sure. The car seat, installed wrong and then right. A nurse who knew your name by the second night. Most American parents complain about how much all of that cost and how badly they slept. They have a point. They also never once wondered whether there would be a building to give birth in.

When news like this comes across your screen, the usual reaction is a quick flush of thanks. Thank God that is not us. It is a real prayer, and not a wrong one. But for most of us it stops right there. We feel thankful, the feeling seems like the right response, and we set the phone down. The woman in Lahj goes on being in labor on a mat on a classroom floor whether you were thankful or not.

Something else comes along with the gratitude for some readers, and it is harder to say. A war in Yemen is a long way off. The people in it are mostly not Christians, and they sit on one side or another of a fight our own country is tangled up in. Without ever saying it, a lot of us file them under somebody else's problem and keep scrolling.

Three · Where the ground is

A child carried into Egypt

Matthew 2 has Joseph waking in the night after a warning in a dream. Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt. Verse 14 says he rose and took them by night and departed. Jesus spent part of His infancy as a child whose family had fled a ruler's violence and crossed a border to stay alive. The Son of God was once a baby carried away from danger in the dark, which is what is happening to children in the Taiz shelters this month.

That settles nothing about any country's border policy, including ours. It does make it very hard for a Christian to look at a mother running with a newborn and see a stranger to his Lord. Leviticus 19:34 told Israel to love the sojourner as themselves, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Israel had been there once. Jesus had been there too, for a while, as a baby.

The Lord watches over the sojourner

Psalm 146:9 says the Lord watches over the sojourners and upholds the widow and the fatherless. God is doing that tonight in Yemen whether or not anyone in the West is paying attention. Deuteronomy 10:18 says God loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Verse 19 then tells Israel to love the sojourner too, so His people are following Him into work He was already doing.

Nothing a reader in Texas or Ohio does this week is going to end the war. But the gratitude you felt can be turned into bread and blankets and a birth kit in somebody's hands, through people who are already on the ground, and that is a far better use of it than a warm feeling on the couch.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Two of these go through your church. The rest happen at home and on your street.

1. 01

   Send money to people already on the ground in Yemen.

   Your missions committee probably knows a partner working there. If it does not, it can find one. Give an amount you will feel, and give it this week while the three hundred are still counting.

2. 02

   Pray for the mothers giving birth on the move.

   For safe deliveries, for a midwife to be close, for milk to come in when there is not enough food. Pray for the babies who came this week, whose names nobody here will ever know.

3. 03

   Put together a birth kit locally.

   Plenty of pregnancy centers and refugee resettlement ministries in American cities need newborn supplies for mothers who arrived with nothing. Call one near you and ask what they are short on, then go buy it.

4. 04

   Read Matthew 2 with your family.

   Read the whole chapter, the flight into Egypt and what came after it. Then ask your kids who they think the babies in Yemen belong to. Let them answer before you do.

5. 05

   Welcome one family that arrived from somewhere else.

   There is one in your church or on your street. Bring a meal. Learn their names and the name of the place they left, and ask them how their first winter went.