According to the BBC, last weekend saw the number of people who had fled the war in Ukraine pass 1.5 million.
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One and a half million people, forced out of their homes.
In many cases these people are women and children running to the Polish border to seek refuge, while the men of the family are forced to remain in their towns and fight the Russian armies.
To put that into perspective, my parents live in the Blue Mountains just on the edge of Sydney.
When I visit them I am always struck at the endless sea of houses which stretch on forever in ever in every direction, and which house the roughly five million inhabitants of our nation's most populous city.
I can hardly comprehend how a little under two weeks of fighting could push the equivalent of nearly one third of Sydney's population from their homes.
And who knows, after all of this is over, whether they will return to a home, or to a pile of rubble.
On so many levels we are witnessing a human tragedy!
Yet the reality is that this number of refugees is not particularly out of the ordinary in our world today.
The UNHCR, for instance, estimates that in mid 2021, around 84 million people were living displaced from their homes, with around 35 million of those being children.
Of course, these are more than statistics.
These are human lives, and war is not the only thing which might disrupt our lives and throw us from the safety of our home.
For example, all of us have been saddened by pictures in our own nation this week of the floods which have devastated towns through south-east Queensland and the NSW northern coastal regions.
These are real people have lost their own homes and livelihoods. You may personally know someone who has been impacted.
For many of these people the damage will simply be too severe, and the cost of rebuilding too great, for them to ever be able to rebuild their homes, or resurrect their businesses.
Australians have long aspired to the "great Australian dream" of home ownership.
Even if the building is nothing all that spectacular, owning our own little place seems to offer the possibility of a place in which we can find security, comfort and belonging.
We desire a place where we can settle in, raise a family, entertain our friends, babysit the grandkids and eventually grow old and see out our days surrounded by the memories of a live well lived.
Maybe this is part of the reason watching other people around the world being robbed of that dream by war and natural disaster is so distressing.
As a Christian I find hope in bringing together two images the Bible uses of heaven.
Famously Jesus speaks of heaven as God's 'house' which has 'many rooms.' In the face of this world's impermanence, those who follow Jesus are able to find comfort knowing that the immortal God invites them into the most secure home imaginable.
This is a picture of living in the most intimate and personal of all settings, the very home of God, and finding a place there in which we find belonging and an eternally secured home.
This comfort is all the greater when we consider that this home is described as God's 'rest.' The home of God is one in which all striving and efforts cease.
A home which war and disaster cannot threaten.
A home in which we can find the security, permanence and belonging which we so long for, but which so often alludes us.
Faced by the worry and devastation we see in the world around us, I find great comfort in hearing the invitation of Jesus to "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
David Robinson is the Anglican minister in Glen Innes
