Crying

                When I hear babies cry, I die a little inside.  Doesn’t matter if I’m at Walmart and a frazzled mom is trying to finish her shopping.  Or at an airport watching a parent text while the babe screams out her distress.  Maybe she is hungry or wet.  Perhaps she just needs to be held, to have the comfort of warm, loving touch.

                Thus, it should be no surprise that reports from the border about babies and children in distress haunt me:  the breastfeeding baby taken from her mother’s arms, the little girl in the cage of children screaming and crying for her mommy.  The rule that the caregivers are not allowed to hold or touch the children to comfort them.  I ache for those little ones.

                The terrible irony is that their parents have spent weeks or months fleeing for their lives.  They made the crushing decision to leave all that is familiar to protect their children.  They could wait no longer.  Maybe food and water had run out.  Maybe they had just seen their neighbors murdered.  Maybe they finally decided that anything would be better than the hell they were living in. 

                So they arrive at the border asking for asylum, which has never been a crime until now.  They probably know that the wait will be long, but at least their families will be safe.  And then their children are abruptly taken, the parents not told where nor given the opportunity to see them.  I can feel the horror, heartache, and helplessness of those parents, too. 

                Jesus says, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).  He tells us to love our enemies.  He speaks through stories to illustrate that every single person in this world, including our perceived enemies, is our neighbor. 

                I don’t know how to solve anything in our world today.  I don’t understand the complex nuances of law or zero tolerance policies.  It seems that cries from our government for justice have forgotten the balancing value of mercy.  It seems that anger and fear are directed at those who are different than us.  Those with darker skin from other countries have become the enemy.  While we have forgotten the law of love, those brown babies keep crying.