Contemplating Immigration and Welcome

Dear God of the stranger and the sojourner,

You who led Abraham out of Ur with nothing but a promise. You who told Your people seventy-three times in Scripture to welcome the foreigner — because they were once foreigners themselves, eating the bread of affliction in Egypt.

I think of the Anabaptist families who fled Switzerland in the dead of winter, 1525, hunted for the crime of baptizing adults and reading Scripture in their own language. They knocked on farmhouse doors in the Palatinate, in Moravia, in the hollows of Pennsylvania — and someone opened those doors. Someone set an extra place at the table. That act of welcome kept an entire tradition of faith alive.

Now I hear You whispering through Luke's Gospel: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied." You did not say "blessed are you who have your papers in order." You said blessed are you who hunger. Full stop.