Minute for Mission: Immigration Sunday

“I have faith that God will dry up the Rio Grande so that I may safely cross,” he said. He had been on the journey from Honduras to the U.S. for a month and a half when we met him in a migrant shelter in Arriaga, Mexico. His teenage son was traveling with him. He told us about the pressure on his son to join a gang and the lack of lawful means to support oneself in his nation. He talked of seeing people murdered in the street.

He also talked of abundance.

He knew that God loved them. He knew that God had more planned for their lives than what they had experienced so far in Honduras. He was certain that God was going with them and that God would “turn the sea into dry land” and they would pass “through the river on foot.” God would make the way clear for them both so that they might find abundant life in the U.S.

Every day, families and individuals are setting out on a journey, after finding living in their homelands no longer possible. Some in the U.S. hear of this and talk of laws, policy and economy. Plans do, certainly, need to be made, but what if, instead, the U.S. church first marveled for a moment in the great faith one must have to take such an action? What if congregations, instead, committed to praying for mercies and miracles to meet sojourners along the way? And what if, in so doing, we realized that God’s promise of abundance is only made manifest when we insist in its manifestation for all of us?

For more information on Central American migration, go to genesisofexodusfilm.com.

Teresa Waggener, Coordinator, Office of Immigration Issues, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Let us join in prayer for: 

PC(USA) Agencies’ Staff

Cheri Harper, Presbyterian Women
Ginger Harris, Presbyterian Investment & Loan Program

Let us pray:

Lord, help us to see that everything is possible in you. Help us to live out this faith in our own lives. Help us to see this faith being lived out in the lives of others. Draw us together as one in you. Amen.