REFUGEES, MIGRANTS ETC: Looking for somewhere nice to be

We debate endlessly whether we’re letting too many migrants, asylum seekers etc. into Australia.
Less discussed is why, every year, 40,000 people who migrated into Australia, turn around and leave again.
Plus another 40,000, born and bred here, also packing up, leaving, never to return.
We say this is the lucky country, best in the world etc.?
80,000 a year vote with their feet, expressing that this is definitely not the place for them.
* * *
Locally-born leavers mostly say they leave for economic reasons — better job opportunities overseas for their skills.
Are there other underlying dissatisfactions making them happy to leave — reasons of which they themselves may be hardly aware?
Disgust, perhaps, at the materialism engulfing Australia, the pervasive contempt for religious belief, the immoral media . . . .
Having reached their chosen destination, these folks may experience disappointment.
People over there, wherever it is, may turn out to be (just beneath the surface) equally as grasping, two-faced and self-seeking as those back at home,
Original Sin is everywhere, mate. You could have read about it in the Bible and saved yourself the trip.
* * *
You took your biggest problem with you. You took yourself.
If you think that wherever you live needs improving, best improve yourself.
Which you cannot do — unless you ask God to change you. Don’t ask him to if you don’t mean it. God does change people.
The Apostle Paul wrote, “I was once a blasphemer, arrogant, and a persecutor, but . . . Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief. For that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, Christ might display all his patience as an example for those who will come to believe in him . . . .”
* * *
It was true. Saint Paul, when young, was the worst possible sinner, persecuting Christian believers, turning them over to the authorities to be killed.
Later, when converted to the Faith, he himself was arrested, imprisoned and, it is said, executed by the Romans.
What God will have in store for you, if you let him take control of your life, is anybody’s guess.
You just have to trust him.
