{"id":31126,"date":"2014-07-30T08:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-07-30T13:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=31126"},"modified":"2014-07-26T15:25:42","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T20:25:42","slug":"i-was-a-stranger-and-ye-took-me-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2014\/07\/i-was-a-stranger-and-ye-took-me-in\/","title":{"rendered":"I was a stranger, and ye took me in"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown\"<\/a>One of the books that we read over and over again with our small children was P.D. Eastman\u2019s Flap Your Wings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A boy finds an egg on a path. He looks around and sees no way for the egg to have gotten there. Then he spots an empty nest on a tree branch above the water. He places the egg in the nest and goes on.<\/p>\n

The bird couple who inhabit the nest come home, startled to find an enormous egg within it. \u00a0Mrs. Bird is hesitant: “That’s not our <\/strong>egg…Look how big it is!”\u00a0But Mr. Bird is adamant:\u00a0“‘But it is an egg. It’s in our nest,’ said Mr. Bird. ‘If an egg is in your nest, you sit on it and keep it warm. It doesn’t matter whose egg it is.'”\u00a0They take turns sitting on it to keep it warm, sometimes both of them sitting together because the egg is so large.<\/p>\n

The egg finally hatches, and what comes out is the strangest looking bird Mrs. Bird has ever seen. She again expresses doubt that this is their baby, \u00a0but Mr. Bird remains committed: “He\u2019s in our nest, so he must be ours…\u00a0His mouth is open. That means he’s hungry. When your baby is hungry,\u00a0you\u00a0feed him.”<\/p>\n

And so they do, a perpetual stream of worms and bugs of all kinds. It seems they can never feed this baby enough; \u201cJunior\u201d is always hungry and grows to an astonishing size.<\/p>\n

Finally, when he\u2019s far too big to remain in the nest, Mr. Bird\u00a0decides that it\u2019s time for Junior to learn to fly, and we get the titular \u201cFlap your wings!\u201d exhortation. Junior has grown enough in the safe care of the birds to be able to leave the nest for a more suitable home. And Mr. and Mrs. Bird are content to see him happy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This story has been at the forefront of my mind as I\u2019ve been listening to the news reports of the humanitarian crisis of undocumented children, be they refugees or illegal economic migrants, gathering at the United States\u2019 southern border.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought about the mother bird, hesitant to take on the responsibility of a child that she knows is obviously not hers, one who may indeed represent a threat to her home and life. So many people would like to be sympathetic to the plight of these children, but they choose to refuse to accept the obligation to care and instead allow expediency to overcome their better inclinations. Some go so far as to ignore the humanity of these children and, in their own minds, to divorce them from the innocence of childhood, so that they may be rejected as an unmitigated evil. (Protesters screaming \u201cGo back to Mexico! Yeah! Get out of here!\u201d and \u201cJesus wouldn\u2019t break the law!\u201d even made an appearance on about 3 minutes in on a clip<\/a> on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.)<\/p>\n

The loud willful hatred so proudly displayed turns my stomach. I am sickened for my country.<\/p>\n

And then I remember the father bird, and I have some hope. It doesn\u2019t matter how they got here; they are here now, and we have an obligation to care for them.<\/p>\n

Whenever there is a crisis elsewhere in the world, like a devastating earthquake or hurricane or a tsunami in some distant place, we see pictures of those children, torn from their families, and many of us feel a visceral desire to scoop of those children, to bring them into our homes and love and care for them. We can\u2019t for many reasons, and so we instead send token donations of money or gathered goods to assuage the intentions of our better natures.<\/p>\n

But these children, fleeing death and devastation, have come to us. Yes, caring for them will cost us time and money and effort, but not caring for them will cost us our compassion. We cannot harden our hearts to the least of these Christ’s brethren, these children, our little brothers and sisters, and still have a broken heart to offer up to our God, their Father.<\/p>\n

They are in our nest, and so they must be ours. Let\u2019s take care of them while they are here. At some point they will be able to flap their wings and find their own place in the world, but for now, we have to opportunity to gather them in, \u201ceven as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings\u201d (Matthew 23:37). It won\u2019t be cheap or easy or convenient, but we must give up our vicious obsession with those dubious virtues if we are to develop the Christ-like attributes that will allow us to establish Zion, to have one heart and one mind, and no poor among us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These children, fleeing death and devastation, have come to us. Yes, caring for them will cost us time and money and effort, but not caring for them will cost us our compassion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":31127,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Unknown.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31126"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31144,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31126\/revisions\/31144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}