Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. Psalm 55:22
There aren’t enough migrant shelters in Tijuana for the tens of thousands of asylum seekers waiting to enter the United States. So a group of Central American migrants is building their own. Dubbed, “Casa Hogar del Puente,” this will be the city’s only migrant-run shelter specifically for women and children asylum seekers enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols program, more commonly known as Remain in Mexico. “This house is for the people that the United States is sending back to Mexico,” said co-founder Michael Rodriguez, 23. “We want to support those people who come back and don’t have a place to go.”
God, we remember in prayer all those who don’t have a place to go. We pray for those who are led by the Spirit to devise a way to help. We pray for hope, Lord, in Tijuana and Juarez and along the U.S. / Mexico border. And for hope in all places where people are afraid, alone, and without a place to turn.
The elders of Johannasburg’s Somali community have held urgent meetings about the attacks on foreign-owned businesses and traders that have been surging for more than a week. Officials believe at least 11 people have died and scores of shops have been burned as of anti-immigrant crimes have become widespread.
God, we pray for those who are not in the place they would call home. We pray for welcome, for the ability to put their roots down and flourish. We pray for those who must change their ways of life to make room for “the stranger in their midst,” including fears and scarcity and cultural shifts. We pray for policies which protect those who are vulnerable.
At least 43 people were shot — eight of them fatally — in gun violence across Chicago over the Labor Day holiday weekend. The Chicago police had just released encouraging data, indicating that in the month of August 2019, the city had experienced its lowest number of murders and shootings since 2011.
God, we continue to pray for churches, communities, and neighbors in Chicago who live with grief and fear, people for whom an unthinkable loss has become too common. We pray for job opportunities to become plentiful, for schools that are safe and thriving, for confidence in a hopeful future to be commonplace, Lord. We pray for an end to the too-common headline of deaths by guns in Chicago and all over U.S. urban areas.
In Arizona, former coal workers—many of whom are from the Navajo Nation or Hopi Tribe—are preparing for major layoffs as their plant closes. The Navajo Generating Station and its accompanying coal mine is the largest coal plant in the West of the U.S., emitting more than 20 million tons of carbon dioxide in a single year. Layoffs are starting this month at the Kayenta Mine, and by 2021, the Navajo Nation as a whole will suffer a $40 million loss in revenue. This situation illustrates the need for what advocates have dubbed a “just transition,” ensuring proper protections and training are in place for the fossil fuel workers as the world transitions to clean energy.
God, for all the workers in the Kayenta Mine and the Navajo Generating Station, we pray for new opportunities, new skills, new ways to make ends meet. We pray for food on the table, for health care, for safe homes. As we continue to look for new, innovative ways to adapt because of climate change, help us to remember those who are made vulnerable when changes come, and help leaders to create policies and practices that honor their dignity and livelihoods.
The president will determine next year’s refugee resettlement numbers by the end of this month, which he must do with the help of leading members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Call those leading members today to urge them to protect the refugee resettlement program and welcome 95,000 refugees for Fiscal Year 2020!
I’ve been procrastinating on writing this blog, hoping that some inspiration would hit me and I would punch out a message that would lift you up and fuel your desire to care for God’s world and its’ people. Read more...
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