Are You Helping Jesus?

A little bit about me if you don’t know: my mother is white (Russian parents) and my dad is Mexican. My dad came to this country illegally after his mother passed while giving birth to his brother. My dad, as the oldest, was tasked with helping his dad with the other 9 kids and my dad knew America was the easiest way to do it. My mom and dad were married in 1978, a mere 20 years after the Supreme Court made interracial marriage legal across the land.

Now that you know where I come from, please understand where my heart and mind has been this year. To say that it’s been hard and confusing is an understatement. The church that I came back home to in 2008 I feel has let me and so many people down.

Before I wrote this piece I looked up the definition of racial reconciliation and this what I found:

“In obedience to God, racial reconciliation is a commitment to building cross-cultural relationships of forgiveness, repentance, love and hope that result in walking in beauty with one another and God.”

I’m not here to say everybody is guilty, but family, we need to have a meeting. We have “prominent” church leaders leading fantastic organizations over seas but when it comes to immigrants and refugees in this country they want them banned as quick as possible. America, we have a long bountiful table, why are we not allowing our brothers and sisters who are hurting to join us?

Matthew 25:40 says: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

So the question is: Are you helping Jesus? Are you looking at the Syrian, the Muslim, Mexican farmworker and saying “that person is made in the image of God and therefore my brother or sister”?

Or are you closing the door and saying it’s not my problem?