Prayerful Immigration and Welcome

Lord of the stranger and the sojourner, You who commanded Israel never to forget the taste of foreign bread — hear us now.

We confess that we have drawn circles too small. We have passed by the family sleeping in the church parking lot, the mother filling out forms in a language that twists her tongue into knots, the father working two jobs and still unable to afford the medicine his daughter needs. We have let policy debates drown out the sound of Your voice in Amos 5:24 — "Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream."

In the Wesleyan tradition, John Wesley understood that there is no holiness apart from social holiness. He opened clinics for the poor and schools for miners' children because he knew that a heart strangely warmed must also warm the hands it extends to others. The God who set the lonely in families has not changed His mind about welcome.

So move us beyond comfortable prayers into uncomfortable obedience. Teach us the holy art of philoxenia — love of the stranger — which the early church practiced not as charity but as worship. Let us see Your image — Your imago Dei — in the face of every person who arrives at our door carrying everything they own in a single bag.