They are Jesus

“They turned on the television and saw some news story about another goddamn humanitarian crisis, another goddamn civil war in some godforsaken place, and saw images of wounded people or starving children and felt a bright, bitter anger at the children for invading and ruining the only moments of relaxation and "me time" the neighbors had all day. The neighbors would get a little indignant here, about how their own lives were hard too, and yet nobody heard them complaining about it. everyone had problems - why couldn't they just quietly deal with them? On their own? With a bit of self-respect? Why did they have to get everyone else involved? It's not like the neighbors could do anything. It's not like civil wars were their fault.”

                                                 Nathan Hill, The Nix

_________________________________________________

How inconvenient of those people to be driven from their country

By violent gangs, and drug wars,

By dictators and authoritarian leaders, armed by us,

By religious extremists who are more than happy to kill,

In the name of God

How selfish of them to want their children to flourish

Or perhaps

Simply live

They should know the rules.  Know the facts

That we won’t let them in

(We will pretend we might, but we won’t

Not today, Not now)

Because they are inconvenient

They intrude into our lives

They make us see things we don’t want to see

And feel things we don’t want to feel

They make us evaluate the way we live, the way we spend

And expend

They might, just might, cut into our profits a touch

They might get a benefit we don’t think they deserve

They might show up in our schools, in our medical clinics,

In our churches

They might be dangerous

Those little 2 and 3 and 6 year olds with brown eyes, and brown skin

And so we arrest them

And rip their families apart

And put them in camps (hidden from view of course)

And we justify

And shame

And minimize

And we tell ourselves that we are just following the law

We are just protecting “our” families

We are just putting America First

It is of course not just brown children on the southern border

It is black children on the streets of our cities

And poor white children

It is any child

Any child without health care, without good food

Good clothes, a chance for a good education

It is any child without hope

To live in this world as a follower of Jesus is not an easy thing

For we are called to see

Called to feel

Called to risk

Called to give

Called to include

Called to clothe and feed and house

Called to treat those around us as family

We are called

to love

in both word, and deed

It is not optional

For those children are not just loved by Jesus

They are Jesus