As a child, I worshiped, singing,
Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary…
Are you a safe place? So deeply divided as a community of faith, as a nation, are you sanctuary?
The Word commands us to love strangers as ourselves,
[But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19:34 KJV
Public Radio International reports,
“Last year, the Trump administration rolled out several policies that restricted access to asylum as well as employment-based and family-based immigration pathways. With a presidential election on the horizon, 2020 could bring even more restrictions as US President Donald Trump makes a final push to fulfill his agenda before voters head to the ballot box.”
The Federal government plans to more aggressively denaturalize and deport US citizens. How can immigrants possibly feel safe when citizens are not? How do we extend hospitality to strangers when we are at war among ourselves?
Susan Milligan, senior politics writer for US News & World Report, describes the state of our union as follows:
Americans not only disagree, according to an in-depth study of the nation’s culture wars and partisanship, they have diametrically different values and perspectives on America itself, with the pluralism that once united the country now serving to divide it.
As a self-proclaimed “nation of immigrants,” we are horribly broken.
For this world is not our permanent home: we are looking forward to a home yet to come. Hebrews 13:14 (NLT)
We should all relax. None of us belong here. And none of us are getting out alive.
My mother country doesn’t love me, and I am NOT the only one.
I embody her shame, I am NOT the only one.
I am the legacy she’d prefer to deny, and I refuse to be silent.
I am American history, but America would prefer me to get along quietly . . .
I Will Not be a Good Girl
Lord, prepare us to be Sanctuary. Open our hearts, remind us that this is not our home and that hospitality is a sacred obligation. So many of us are only one circumstance away from the unthinkable. Wrongful arrest. Criminal deportation.
Welcome to the internalized effects of generations of marginalization in America.
America’s moral flexibility is astounding.
Jesus would be detained at the US border.
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I am a very serious person, so I laugh a lot. I write because it helps me understand the way I feel about the world. I married my high school sweetheart, and together we made two exceptional people and raised a dog so remarkable, I wrote a book about the faith lessons he taught me. I envision a world where each of us embraces the Perfect, Precise Image of God that we are, naturally, at every given moment, even as each of us exists in a liminal state.
- Ascendancy: Losing My Mother & Finding My Way - September 11, 2023
- #Wait(ing) in Expectation-Broken I Came to the Cross - April 6, 2022
- Intermediate, Between Two States - February 9, 2022