If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. Mother Theresa
Meditation: I heard on NPR about a village in France where refugees are hovering at the border, trying to cross over further into Europe. The border patrol has prevented them from crossing, and the French people have been told neither to help nor feed these refugees, or they would be arrested. However, the region has a long history of helping refugees. Their grandparents, fathers and mothers were hiding Jews from the Nazis. Civil disobedience has been part of this villagers’ history. And so, every day, they prepare food for the refugees who wait at the border, hoping against reality that they would be allowed to pass. And although the French people can only do so little, they do it. They even risk being arrested. They go out every day with food they prepared and continue the legacy of feeding and sheltering those who flee from regimes that uproot and persecute them. When later in the day I also hear the news that in our city Mexican immigrants are no longer sending their children to public school out of fear of being arrested, and when I see a video of an undocumented Hispanic mother with four American born children seeking refuge in a church, I wonder: “How do we support these refugees who live next door to us?”
Prayer: God of refuge, we pray for all mothers and fathers who are fleeing and for all children who are afraid. We pray for refugee families in Europe, in Syria and Afghanistan. And now in sudden and absurd ways we are needing to pray also for immigrant families here in the US. God, wake the US up and stop the wicked talk, stop the finger pointing and stop the powerful from putting unbearable burdens on families. Wake us up! Wake me up and help me see how I can feed or help just one person today who needs my support. Amen
Then you shall call, and the Lord shall answer; you shall cry, and He shall say, Here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall rise in obscurity, and your darkness shall become as the noonday.
Isaiah 58:9-10
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