Immigration

This is Chinatown in Washington DC. Settlements like these sprung up around the US in the late 1800’s. Pioneering men from China left everything behind—property, employment, etc—for attractive offers to work in America. The idea was: get established, send for their families, and live the American dream like so many other immigrants.

Social media: the ever-developing medium that we love and hate simultaneously. Where else can you reconnect with friends from long ago, take a quiz about how long you could survive a zombie apocalypse, tweet your opinion about current events, or pin hundreds of images in one day. This medium has become an inherent part of our lives. For all its good, we know there are challenges in equal part.

Not every pastor would say to his congregation, “And then I felt stupid, and I had to ask his forgiveness,” but Pastor Dave Beelen did. On August 25, 2013, Pastor Beelen of Madison Square CRC began his sermon with a confession: a confession of his misjudgement, which resulted in a mistake.

Instead of giving something up for Lent this year, try walking a new step on the justice road every day. We've put together some suggestions for you, one for each day of Lent.

For centuries, Christians have been fending off a certain heresy that the early church tried to put away– a heresy called Gnosticism that said that bodies and souls are separate, and not equal. This lie tells us God cares about our spiritual lives, but not about our physical lives.

Scripture tells us that we are whole people – body, spirit, heart, mind – and that all of this is what makes us image-bearers of God himself. God is not interested in just our souls. For God, dualities like that don’t exist. We are whole people – body and soul together.

I fought for and agree with those restorations, but the very particular way in which the cuts remain in effect for privately sponsored refugees is a way of saying, “we want to control the way you participate in sponsorship and we are going to hurt you this way.” It might seem to outside observers that this change impacts only a small group of refugees, but that is not true.

This winter, World Renew and the OSJ are able to offer up to 20 scholarships towards the registration cost of The Justice Conference, happening in Los Angeles, Friday evening February 21 through February 22. If you would like to apply for a scholarship to attend this conference let us know by filling out this application by January 20.

I had to re-read the opening sentence of the news report: “Meeting in the sanctuary of the Christian Reformed Church of North America’s headquarters, a coalition of Michigan fruit and vegetable growers said their crops are rotting in the fields because U.S. immigration policy lacks a workable system for migrant workers.”

Defend immigrants and welcome strangers are prominent Biblical calls. Yet, a 2010 Pew Forum survey reports that 88% of white Evangelicals’ views on immigration are primarily influenced by concerns other than Christian faith. Only 16% of white evangelicals had heard about immigration from their pastor or other clergy.  

Mr. & Mrs. Elgersma would arrive every Saturday morning without fail for our weekly grocery run. They would make a point of going through our refrigerator and cupboards to take inventory of what needed replenishing. Then they would walk me through each food aisle of the small Co-op Store, point to a product, name it and very patiently say, “You like? You have.” And should I nod my head, they would add the item to our grocery cart. Every week without fail we would always stop in front of the meats counter and load up on packaged wieners. This was our primary source of protein for weeks, even months!