We are ALL God’s beloved children
We are ALL God’s beloved children.
The images of agents on horseback chasing down Haitian migrants have collectively horrified us. No matter our political beliefs, no matter our opinions on immigration or border security the dehumanization of God’s beloved children should outrage us. For migrants, the dehumanization began long before Reuters journalists captured these particular moments on camera.
It is dehumanizing for a subsistence farmer to have failed crops three years in a row due to flooding and drought brought on by climate chaos that she had no part in causing.
It is dehumanizing for an impoverished family to have their land taken by the state and given to a foreign company for logging or mining.
It is dehumanizing for girls to be denied access to an education and for women to be forced to leave their jobs, dismissing their voices and diminishing their rights.
Let us not allow this moment to become another moral outrage of the week, and then move on with our lives. There is a migration crisis in our world, and it is rooted in the complexities of war, corruption, climate change and so much more. We can and ought to take notice. But let us not allow the complexity of these issues frighten us from taking a stand either.
We can boldly declare that God never intended it to be this way. God never intended for his beloved children to be so desperate for survival that they would uproot and camp under a bridge in a foreign land. God never intended that unrelenting consumption would destroy the land and make growing food nearly impossible for the poorest in our world. God never intended it to be this way.
As people wrestle with how we ought to respond, let us remember that Jesus was himself a migrant. Our migrant savior. God could have chosen any life, but he chose that of a child born into state violence, forced to flee to a neighboring country for safety. Jesus knows and feels the pain of migrants.
Today we pray for our beloved Haitian brothers and sisters on the border, who have already suffered gang violence, state violence, flooding, lost crops, hunger and desperation. We pray for compassion and justice to root into our leaders' hearts. We pray for Haiti as the nation recovers from an earthquake, and rebuilds the government after the assassination of the president earlier this year.
Join us in prayer.
Image: Richard Pierrin/Tearfund
