It is interesting how as you journey through life, with your own ideas about what you are supposed to be doing and trying hard to live out the passions God has given you, different things come up that leave you in a position that you really weren't expecting. Some of these things are considered positive, others negative; this happened in my own life recently, and I find my circumstance to be very positive as I've been caused to give thought and attention to a group of people I had never before considered.
After changing my mind this summer about attending seminary, I was forced to be in a place where I really didn't know what direction my life was heading in or what I was going to do for work. After a couple of months of fretting and being stretched to trust God more than ever before, I accepted a job with the YMCA as a Site Coordinator for their Community HOPE program in a Hispanic community. I won't go into detail about how this job surfaced or the perfect timing that it was, but I saw God's faithfulness in a remarkable way. It was literally plopped into my lap and was well above anything I imagined for myself in this next chapter of life. I have now completed one week of work and my thoughts about the position and my role there are now drastically different than they were before I started.
Have you ever given thought to the immigrants and aliens who live among us? Whether they are your next door neighbor or just the men you see working at the construction site down the road, have you considered them? Their lives, their struggles, their own passions, their faith: have you ever thought about those things?
I can honestly say I really hadn't. I suppose that my short time in Guatemala and my longer stint in the Dominican Republic opened me up to this idea of aliens living in a foreign land. Besides being an alien myself in these places, I was often surrounded by people who longed to travel to or live in the U.S. or who had family members living there already. But I never considered how they are treated once they get there; I definitely didn't think about how I was called to treat them.
Because of my new position, where I will be serving families from different Hispanic countries, I have been thinking more of how to approach this as a follower of Christ and a daughter of the Most High God. To be honest, I've always felt a bit uncomfortable on the topic and often avoided digging deep because I think that a lot of the immigrants are illegal. Whether that is true or not, I assume that many are here illegally, and since I believe in following the law as much as I believe I should love and serve all people, I have been confused at my approach to this people group.
God met me in the midst of my thoughts and doubts as I attended a Christian community development conference this week for work. I attended a workshop on this exact topic. It was inspiring. There are really dedicated and passionate people around the country, and in my own city, who are fighting for the rights of the immigrants, helping to meet their needs and to raise awareness that the way they are treated here is not Biblically sound, and that we have been doing a less than sufficient job of loving the alien among us.
When Moses is speaking to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 10, he says, "For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the alien, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt." I absolutely love how just God is. He shows no favoritism; He is totally just and right all of the time. It makes total since that God would love the alien along with the fatherless and widow; they are of the most vulnerable people, weak and easily targeted when they are far from home and in an unfamiliar land. They have no power, and in my experience with God and in accordance with what His word says, God's power rests on the weak and faint-hearted (2 Corinthians 12:10).
So, though I know we were not part of this original audience and we live in a totally different place and time, I have to wonder what God would say to us today about how the immigrants, illegal and legal, are treated in our country today. God seems to uphold justice for them as He declares in Exodus 13:49 while giving law to the Israelites for Passover, "The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you." He values them. Later in chapter 23 of Exodus, He says, "Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt." He wants to protect them as well.
Maybe you have never personally oppressed an alien, but as a Christian, do you welcome them? Do you defend them? Do you consider their circumstances, and no matter what mistakes they have made as a broken human, realize how hard it must be to be far from family and live in a place where they are undoubtedly seen as unequal? I was personally convicted by these questions. While looking up some antonyms of the word oppression, I found words such as help, kindness, blessing. I can't say that I have treated the aliens among me in such a way in my lifetime. God, forgive me.
There is much more I could say on this topic; I received wonderful information and insight at the workshop from the people who are at the front lines fighting for this cause. But all I really want to do is put my own thoughts and convictions out there, and hope that we will begin to act differently toward these people who have been outcast due to the color of their skin and nationality, not matter if they were born here or not. Let us come before God and ask how He would want us to live among the U.S. immigrant. Does He want us to continually ignore, oppress, and judge them? Or does He want us to begin showing hospitality, which actually comes from the root word philoxenia - the love of strangers.
I've known God for five years now and I can safely say that He wants us to begin serving them, loving them, and showing them who He is. Building relationship with them is a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel as God's ultimate plan is unraveled. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name- Psalm 86:9. As one man proclaimed at the conference, "I believe that God is wanting to bring us a great blessing through this immigrant people, and we are completely shunning it." Join me, brothers and sisters, as we open our hearts and lives to the aliens living among us, who are highly favored by God just as we are.