Love UndocumentedSample

Sadness and celebration. Pain and beauty. Heartache and joy. To be honest, I am grateful that these intermingle. Because sometimes the burdens facing our families, our neighbors, and our world feel crushing. As one who grew up isolated from so much of the world’s pain, I often found myself overwhelmed when I encountered another tragedy or injustice. 

When the deep, heart-twisting realities of injustice, racism, and poverty settle in, it can feel as if you’re suffocating. But there is nothing new under the sun. And while I may feel righteous anger, I am reminded that many resilient people have walked faithfully in the midst of suffering and persecution and injustice for generations. And they have much to teach us.

At one time or another, most of us have likely credited those living in hard circumstances for teaching us about contentment. Yet while contentment is certainly an important lesson, I am convinced that people living on the margins have so much more to teach us than shallow gratefulness for material things. They can teach us how to hope. They can teach us how to anticipate justice while maintaining our dignity in the waiting. They can teach us how to fight. And they teach us how to celebrate and truly live amid unspeakable suffering.

It is this steadfast resilience and belief in God’s faithfulness that inspires me and that enriches the body of Christ. When our churches are too often divided by society’s barriers, we miss so much from each other. Sometimes those who have experienced the most tragedy are the only ones who can truly teach us how to worship the Lord with delight. When we are isolated from groups who have deeply known suffering, can we truly know heart-drenching joy? We are incomplete in the body of Christ if we remain in our siloed communities defined by race, culture, country of origin, language, and socioeconomic status.

No, I cannot look at neighbors and friends, some of whom struggle to make ends meet or face other withering challenges, and simply be grateful for the ways ease and comfort have permeated most of my life. No, I am taught how to party, how to lean in to community, how to continue to hope for God’s goodness and grace when the headlines of the day suggest all good things are coming to an end.