By Mike Wallens
Imagine being forced from your home, your community, as a refugee, an asylum seeker, or forced from your home by fire and violence. Imagine not knowing what will happen and if you will be welcomed into a new space to be safe.
Imagine Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fleeing from their home.
What’s the difference between a wish and a hope? How does one truly anticipate what cannot be seen, and try against all odds to work to make it happen? For what do you dare hope, the realization of which it will take something like a resurrection from death to experience it? Are you willing to trust and work to bring it about?
This is the season of Advent. We find on the border, people living out the themes of Advent. Hopeful expectation in the midst of trauma. Joy amid chaos and sorrow.
It continues to be a true blessing to step into sacred spaces of various shelters and tent camps or on the streets where migrants of all shapes, sizes, genders, and ages find themselves. It has been heartbreaking, joy-filled, and inspirational to meet people who in their worries, fears, and hopes point us toward a deeper relationship with Jesus. This Christmas will be one where along the border we will do our best to engage fully in the concept of Advent—where we hold the joy, pain, hope, and suffering all at once. And we do it all with a deep sense of gratitude.
As we walk through this season of Advent, may we devote some time to imagining what it is like to be a stranger in a strange land and to welcome the stranger. Listen to what God might be saying to you on where to be and how to contribute to a Beloved Community.
May we share in God’s hope, peace, joy, and love that these neighbors are holding on to as they journey in faith.
May we stand in the gap with the Spirit for those who are longing for a miracle. And may we not rest until we have seen these neighbors arrive safely to a place, they can call home.
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The Rev. Mike Wallens is the vicar of the Episcopal Church in Marfa, Texas. He serves four other churches in the Big Bend region of Far West Texas and is also the Big Bend sector leader for Rio Grande Borderland Ministries. Rio Grande Borderland Ministries ministers along the border in the Big Bend region of Texas. It provides pastoral care for asylum seekers, dreamers, and people who have given up their homeland to find safety and the opportunity for a better life.