Hope has many faces. For over 8500 Afghan refugees it means starting a new life in New Jersey. We have long been not only a state composed of immigrants, but the most diverse state in the Union. The first immigrants arrived in the seventeenth century, and they haven’t stopped coming.
Like earlier immigrants, this new group will be full of both hope and fear. They will come into a new living situation, face a new culture, and struggle to learn English. Like earlier immigrants, they will seek to find others like themselves who will offer the hope that they can keep some of their old culture even in a new land just as others have done.
In his story, “The Melting Pot,” written over a century ago, Israel Zangwill looked to the resolution of ethnic and religious violence in a love story between a Russian Christian and Jew who had escaped a program. Our pot now holds a stew of the variety of human beings who live here. Our hope and the hope of all who come is that the stew will be seasoned with the right herbs and spices – welcome and inclusion.
Prayer for the Day
Holy Accompanier of the exile,
You offer us a new life through your promise of freedom;
Holy Uplifter of the downtrodden,
You teach us to stand our ground and speak our voice;
Holy Guide of wisdom and understanding,
You grant us your grace to love in the face of hate.
May we live as did the one who extended his hand to all,
Even Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The United States should be an asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty.
Thomas Paine, Patriot of the American Revolution (1737-1809)
We welcome refugees not because they are American, but because we are American.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President Lutheran Immigration Refugee Service
I was eyes to the blind and feet the lame,
I was a father to the needy and championed the cause of the stranger.
I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made them drop their prey from their teeth.
Job 29: 15-17