June 2018 SPECIAL EDITION June 2018 SPECIAL EDITION | Page 2

JUNE 2018
Good Stewards Help The Needy. NOW!
Immediately before I started writing
this article, I checked one of my news apps.
The lead story said President Trump was
ending the policy to separate children from
their parents at our Southern border. Good!!
I hope the new policy is still in effect as you
read this and that we have figured out a way
to reunite the parents and children already
separated. We need to protect our borders,
but I believe God would not
separate children from mom
and dad to get the job done.
The good news is that the United States
already has a God-like policy to help the needy who
approach our border, a policy that helps us define
who is politically “good.” It’s our “asylum” policy.
America’s Asylum Policy is designed to give special
treatment to those who have fled to our borders
because they were being “persecuted” in their home
country. It’s a Christian policy. The Asylum Policy
is based on the Eighth Beatitude, which says the
persecuted should be
BLESSED.
I am not naïve. I know
that mistakes will happen when
we give special treatment to the
persecuted. No matter how
hard we try to separate the bad
from the good, bad guys will
occasionally slip between the
cracks. But, our Asylum Policy
is the American Way. It is
based on the words on the
Statue of Liberty. “Give me
your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses yearning to
breathe free...”
I love a sentence in
the Old Testament book of
Sirach. It says, “Do not
keep needy eyes waiting.”
That’s beautifully put. It’s
God being poetic in telling
us how to lead good lives,
how to get to heaven.
Here’s God’s secret to get to
heaven in a nutshell: help
the needy and do it now.
Back to our borders.
As I said above, I personally
believe every country, to be
a country, must have
borders and protect them. We should do
everything necessary to keep bad people,
dangerous people, out of our country. But,
as Christians, we have a dilemma. God not
only says we must help the needy, he
explicitly says we shouldn’t wait. God says
help the needy as soon as we see their need.
We should not keep “needy eyes”
WAITING. So, Jesus says we must
determine, as best we can, in the moment,
who are “needy.” And, to do that, we must
do what Jesus talks about in the parable of
the weeds and the wheat. We must figure
out how to separate the good and the bad.
Our Asylum Policy IS
the American Way. But, much
more importantly, it is GOD’S Way. Approximately
2200 years ago, God told us through Ben Sira, a
wise man who lived in Jerusalem, to “not keep
needy eyes waiting.”
America’s immigration policy is politically
charged. Good people disagree about how it should
be implemented. And, that too, is the American
Way. Nonetheless, as great as the American Way is,
it is trumped by God’s Way. And, Good Stewards
know God’s Way says we must help the needy.
Now! Jesus understands God’s way. Jesus tells us
to “welcome” strangers. He does not say, “Send
them home.”
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