You Welcomed Me: Seven Days to Better Welcoming Refugees and ImmigrantsExemplo

Form a Human Chain

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

A powerful rip current had pulled 10 people out to sea at a beach in Panama City, Florida. The current was too strong and the group couldn’t swim back to shore. They were crying out for help for a long time without anyone noticing.

“Form a human chain!” people started to shout as they saw the group and realized the urgency. A group of five tried to reach but was nowhere near. Then fifteen, then dozens were linking up and reaching out into the sea. Finally, enough people came together to reach the group struggling in the current. All the swimmers and rescuers made it back safely to shore. They did it together and every link was necessary.

In welcoming our new neighbors, every link is necessary. We all need each other. In a letter Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he illustrated the body of Christ as an actual human body––not made up of one part but of many. Every part has a different function, the hand, the eyes, the nose. All different but all needed. He also goes on to say that, “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it,” (1 Cor. 12:26). Our refugee brothers and sisters’ stories should move us into action, because their pain is our pain and their honor is our honor.

Like the group of people on the beach in Florida, we all are needed and necessary. Where are you the link in the chain?

Practice:

A vital part of being a link in the human chain is commitment to being a good neighbor, to hope, to reconciliation, and to grace. What is one small, concrete thing in each of these areas where you can be nourished by God and strengthened to continue in this work?

1. How can you be a good neighbor to an immigrant or refugee? This can also extend beyond your own neighborhood.
2. How can you nourish hope, especially when the world’s suffering sometimes pushes us toward despair? How can you nourish rest in order to stay in it for the long haul?
3. How can you take part in conversations of reconciliation?
4. Think of how you’ve received grace in your life. Then ask how you can help someone else experience grace in a similar way.