What Was It Jesus Said About The Children?

Let them come to me?

I do not know all the facts about the immigration crisis we are facing as a nation.  In a population of varying amounts of knowledge and interest and research, I put myself slightly above the middle.  Sometimes I delve into an issue that catches my attention, sometimes the kids hold all my attention and I miss a week's worth of news.  I know some things about the immigration situation but there is much that I do not know.  I don't have any solutions or real, tangible strategies to fix the problem.

Here is what I do know.

These are people we are talking about.  Someone's grandma.  Someone's father.  Someone's baby girl.  These are people that that have hopes and dreams and faith in the future.  These are people that are probably in desperate circumstances.  So desperate that they would send their babies off alone across a border.  I won't even leave my baby alone upstairs.  I cannot imagine what living situation must be so horrible that it seems not only reasonable, but best for your child to send them to another country without you in squalid conditions.

No matter our political leanings, we should have compassion for these people.  They are not stray cats or mosquitoes or an invasive fish or plant species.  They have just as much worth as you or me or our next door neighbor or some man in China or a woman in Africa.  Why do we talk about them with such disdain, as if they are a sub-species instead of our brothers and sisters?  Why are there people boycotting their buses and publicly shaming them?  Can you just imagine being one of these children, or even adults, alone in a strange place without any idea of where your next meal will come from or where you will sleep? Faced with a crowd of people protesting in the ways they have been?  What is the matter with these protesters?  These people have worth and value and dignity.

It is sad and appalling to me to hear the way people speak on this issue.  People who speak smugly about how they deserve all they have, how they worked for it all - and they aren't handing anything over to these lazy, illegal immigrants.  For starters, it seems to me that the people that are actually lazy are probably still sitting in their own country.  Smuggling yourself and your family into a country with pretty much nothing seems to be a lot of work to me.  I''ve never tried it, but I have legally entered the country through customs and that was a huge pain in the ass so it has to be way harder illegally.  These people are people with hope and faith in a future.  Hope that will make them endure anything to just try and find the possibility of a better future somewhere else - even if it is the wrong way to go about it.  Maybe it is their only way.  They are so focused that they are undeterred by our scathing words and looks of condemnation. 

It is easy, I think, to get caught up in all the media and the politics and what we think is fair.  It is much harder to remember we have all we have by the grace of God.  We have not earned this ourselves.  We are blessed to be in a situation where our hardest days would be bliss to so much more of the world.  Instead of condemnation, disdain, and judgement we should practice thankfulness, compassion, and openness of heart.