XOXO
I’ll admit that it was naive of me to not anticipate the response of southern governors to the Paris attacks, but it caught me by surprise.
There but for the grace of God goes my baby Craig. (Photos most obviously not mine – google image searched.) “I want to bury my children and sit beside them until I die,” said his broken father.
Robert Bentley does not speak for me. I accept the vulnerability and fear that comes from allowing strange people with a strange language and strange customs into our country (after a year or more of careful background investigation and vetting, which is what they go through). I am willing to be stretched and uncomfortable, even a little fearful, to give them room in my community. The cost of the Syrian war has been so high for civilians. I see myself in them – I see my sons in them. The highest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. These beautiful neighbors I am called to love are dying, and how I wish my whole country opened its big, rich arms wide and said ‘Suffer the little children to come to me.’
Bring them here, to my home and heart. I can make room. I want to make room, with all the complications and cost and (surely) community rejection that would bring. Robert Bentley does not speak for me.
3 Comments
Laura Watt
There are no words to express the depth of pain when thinking of the refugees’ losses … I am with you and all those who have great compassion for the families of war and subsequent, unfathomable loss. After just reading the words of Carolyn Myss in the book, Sacred Contracts of America, I am reminded of the values on which our country was founded. Freedom, choice, independence, human rights. We as a country and people must put aside our fears and find our collective and personal compassion to help those fleeing oppression, and in their desperation, risk their lives for a peaceful and safe place to raise their children.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. ” Author: Emma Lazarus
joy
Offer hospitality to strangers, for in that way, many have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13.
joy
Also, if your small ones have outgrown baby carriers, this organization is gathering them and sending them to refugee families making their way through Europe. It’s such a small thing, but it is something.
https://www.facebook.com/carrythefuture/posts/545474968936278:0