“It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”
— Jesus
A Courts and Ports team member with a Guatemalan mother.
And so this is Christmas, which is all about a homeless child born in a cave in a barnyard.
Christmas for children is not supposed to be a bleak time. It is supposed to be joy-filled.
What follows are more reports from members of First United Methodist Church in McKinney, TX, who recently witnessed the situation for migrants and the people serving them on the Texas border through the “Courts and Ports” program. See my previous post for more.
A team member who is a mom wrote about the Guatemalan mom and son pictured above as follows:
-
What an experience. I sat at a camp on the Mexican side of the border and talked with a mom, Jessica, and her 2-year old son, Daniel, from Guatemala who were seeking asylum.
Art by Angel Valdez for The Houston Catholic Worker at http://www.cjd.org
She had been separated from her husband and their other child (5 year old) and didn’t know where they were or how to contact them.
Daniel had caught a cold, has asthma, and Jessica was very worried because she hadn’t been able to bathe him in a long time.
The volunteers we were assisting were delivering her supplies to take care of him. Still, Daniel was happily prancing around on his caballo (stick horse), which was a simple broom.
I felt such a connection with this mom, just trying to care for her child who was sick, in a strange place without her husband and other child.
Another team member wrote:
-
Friends, what weighs particularly heavily from our trip to the border — the children…so many children.
We saw them under bridges and tarps, in tents and shelters, and on the plane home to Dallas being transported to other states after discharge from detention centers.
In the true spirit of Christmas, reaching out to the homeless children and families on the border.
These are children, families, refugees, fleeing horrific escalating violence in their home countries. They want to work and be safe. In fear for their children’s lives, parents weigh difficult decisions to leave everything behind and come to the border to navigate the ever-tightening, narrowing, and confusing immigration system.
They wait for weeks camped outside with little or no shelter, hoping for permission to access a port of entry. Or they cross any way they can and then present themselves to US border authorities to request asylum.
Crossing back over to the US at the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville, we left behind men, women, and children who had been waiting outside for weeks to access the bridge while we walked past the empty waiting room for asylum seekers inside the quiet border station.
So your thought for the day from yours truly is:
How are Christians supposed to respond to the immigration crisis on the U.S. borders?
I’m thinking we respond, first of all, with all the compassion and sensitivity we can muster. We also respond by educating ourselves about the facts on the ground, which aren’t always the facts as presented in proper or full context by the news media — and certainly not by political leaders with distinctly anti-Christ agendas.
Leave a Reply