The Christian Church universal in the global connection, including our beloved United Methodist Church entered the Advent Season in a year bombarded with the COVID-19 pandemic, humanitarian crisis, unemployment, displacement, escalating social and racial injustice and natural disasters or calamities.
Here in the United States, there are 14, 086,016 cases and 275,550 deaths.[1] The Advent Season is inviting us to pray and think about children seeking asylum with parents and have ended up in limbo in Mexico. The child Jesus, born and brought by Joseph and Mary fled to seek asylum in the neighboring country, Egypt,[2] is the child we remember and celebrate in all of us in the celebration of Advent and Christmas embracing Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
We invite you to sing this Advent hymn, “A Hymn for Neighbors Seeking Asylum,”[3] as you and I pray for all the children who are seeking new homes for them and their families and they have been denied. Are there no more rooms in the inn? [4]Are there no more rooms in this United of States vast land for all children seeking to live?
May we all be empowered to pray to empower all children seeking asylum.
WORD Isaiah 65:23[5]
They won’t labor in vain,
nor bear children to a world of horrors,
because they will be blessed by the Lord,
they along with their descendants.
WISDOM “O God, help us never to confuse what is quite legal with what is just and right in Your sight.”[6]
PRAYER Pray for: