Morning Meditation: Immigration and Welcome

Gracious God, who set the stars in their courses and yet bends low to hear the whisper of the exile,

This morning I hold before you the face of every stranger standing at an unfamiliar door — the mother clutching documents she cannot read, the father learning to say "thank you" in a language that still feels like stones in his mouth, the child drawing pictures of a home she will never see again. Deuteronomy 10:19 does not offer us a suggestion; it delivers a command forged in memory: "Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." Israel's God does not say consider the immigrant. He says love them — with the same fierce, covenant tenderness of hesed, that stubborn loving-kindness that will not let go.

The Anglican tradition has long held that the Eucharistic table is rehearsal for the Kingdom. Every Sunday we practice welcome — we extend open hands, we receive bread we did not bake, wine we did not press. If we can do this at the altar, surely we can do it at the border, at the school gate, at the council meeting where someone's housing hangs in the balance.

Lord, forgive us when we have loved the idea of hospitality more than the inconvenience of it. Shake us from comfortable abstraction into the holy disruption of actual neighbors. Give us eyes to recognize your image — Imago Dei — in the accent we do not understand and the customs we have not yet learned to appreciate.