Contemplating Immigration and Welcome

Dear God of Welcome and Refuge,

You who turned a stable into a sanctuary and made a manger the throne room of heaven — teach us what it means to open the door wide.

Hebrews 13:2 tells us, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Lord, we confess that too often we peer through the chain on the door rather than swing it open. We calculate the cost of an extra plate at the table instead of remembering that You fed five thousand with a boy's sack lunch and had baskets left over.

The Black Church was born from people who knew what it meant to arrive somewhere unwelcome — dragged to foreign soil, stripped of language and name, yet somehow building a faith so deep it shook the foundations of an empire. Our grandmothers set a place for the stranger because they remembered what it felt like when nobody set one for them. That memory is holy. That memory is theology.

So when a family shows up at the church door speaking a language we don't recognize, with documents we can't read and fear in their eyes we understand perfectly — let us be the people who say, "Come in. Sit down. Are you hungry?" Because every stranger carries the fingerprints of the Almighty, and every act of welcome is a sermon louder than anything preached from this pulpit.

Send us out today not just with compassion in our hearts, but with room at our tables.

In the name of Jesus, who was Himself a refugee child carried through the night into Egypt — Amen.