By Staff
"I, me, mine" ring out these days as security, stability, and homogeneity seem threatened. Terms like alien and stranger threaten us. They threaten the status quo and force comfort zones to be expanded. Strangers and aliens are, first of all, suspected and, most of the time, rejected out of hand.
The Christian culture is founded on strangers and aliens being grafted into the family of God. The apostle Paul declares in the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 12, "that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." "No hope" describes a significant portion of the world's population.
Paul continues in verse 13: "But now you who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." God reached out to us as repentant aliens and brought us into His family through belief in His Son Jesus Christ.
In the early days of these United States, compassionate hands reached across cultural, religious, and national barriers to welcome like strangers and aliens to this land.
Nothing describes the American spirit like the poem and plaque on the Statue of Liberty containing these words: "Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Where do you draw the line in sharing the impossible dream of "the United States of America"? This country with all its faults is God's gift to the world and still stands as the greatest land of all!
The curse of materialism is maintenance. Once you have it, you feel you must keep it. Granted, there is the principle of stewardship, but generosity trumps stewardship every time. How can we mere beggars begging bread, having found it, turn away other legitimate beggars with similar desires?
America is great. Why is America so great? We are not the smartest, neither the hardest working, nor do we have anything else to recommend us to the stature we have in this world. It has to be God!
There is the pressure of aliens crowding in. There must be rule of law, lest anarchy ensue. But from God's perspective, the term "illegal alien" may be the greatest oxymoron ever. God levels the playing field, reminding us that we who were and are aliens must reach out to others taking the same path we took.
Self-protectionism serves nobody, not even self. There is a Living God of Heaven, the Creator of everything. Every person matters to God. The writer of the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews adds considerable tension to our lives by saying in chapter 13, verse 2, "Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels." Strangers are by definition . . . strange, to us anyway, but that admonition removes any possibility of sectarianism.
God has put us in a crucible of testing. Will we who have and enjoy so much tighten our grip and refuse to share with the rest of the world?
God, who gave us what we have, is able to multiply it as we reach out and share with others in the same way God did with us.
God has a place for the law-abiding alien. Our selfishness and self-protectionism ring hollow against the cry of those who only desire a niche in this great nation we enjoy.