May my heart rejoice in Your love, O
Lord.
Let me live each day anew.
Oh deliver not the soul of Thy
turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked: forget not the congregation of Thy
poor forever. Psalm 74:19
The Kingdom of God is justice and peace
and joy in the Holy Spirit. Come Lord, and open in us the gates of Your
Kingdom.
In everything do to others as you would
have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Matthew 7:12
Lord, in our efforts to serve, help us
to be true to who we are in You. Make us see and understand the gifts and
talents You have given us, and give us courage to use them for the building up
of Your kingdom. Amen.
So
we all have different ideas of fun.
And
yesterday, after a quite long day at the Arizona History Museum and their
not-quite-ready-for –prime-time program for 66 fourth graders but one of the
dads was a wonderful help in an experienced soccer coach sort of way, and after
making a couple phone calls home to Spanish-only parents about their child’s
off task classroom behavior, and after a quite blustery playground duty, and yet
again another thirty-minute online course on how to administer the AZ Merit
test and yes, I got 100% on the post quiz, and after a pretty long meeting at
the Thomas E. Lee Instructional Resources Center detailing that TUSD only pays
for non-covered airport parking and that we were all being issued small flags
to wave respectfully and with dignity when our schools received their various
awards at the Magnet Schools of America ceremony in Baltimore, Maryland, I
headed over to the Benedictine Monastery on Country Club, parked my car under
the solar panels and jiggled the kinda tricky backdoor, to enter an entirely
different sort of world.
I
looped my dangling name tag and walked down the hall past where big plates of
rice and beans and oatmeal muffins were being handed out, around the corner
where a nice person was reviewing the rather convoluted legal ramifications of
requesting asylum to a group of very-carefully listening ears, to the
transportation room. Now, actually I haven’t been officially trained for this
duty, although I sure made a lot of phone calls that first crazy week at St.
Pius when Diego was making up things as we went along in lovely chaos, but 87
folks had been admitted today, and they needed someone to call each of their
contacts spread all across America and walk them through the details of
purchasing Greyhound bus tickets for each family member, and getting back to us
with the confirmation number. And it’s pretty hard talking on a phone in
Spanish reading lots and lots of numbers back in forth with about forty or
fifty pretty anxious folks crowded around and about half of them under the age
of eight, so in my free time I organized a coloring crew at my table.
And
Maria looked especially worn out. And man, her twelve-year-old daughter
looked pregnant to me, but I wasn’t doing intake, and they had already met with
the medical team, eaten dinner, and been issued clean sheets and towels, so I
focused on the phone call to her nephew in Riverside. And the first two numbers
didn’t work, but she pulled out a very tattered scrap of paper with yet a third
number and I finally got through. And he sounded cheerful and business-like,
and once I gave him all of the assorted phone numbers, and please buy tickets
that leave between 9 AM and 9 PM because it’s a lot easier to find rides to the
bus station then, I passed the phone over to Maria.
Tears
welled up in those weary eyes. Maria held the phone, and after whispering,
“Thank you,” she said to herself, to her daughter, to her nephew, to me, and to
her heavenly Father, “I am in a safe place.” Again and again she repeated, “I
am in a safe place.” At last. “God has proven faithful and not abandoned me and
my daughter. At last we are safe. We have passed through things so horrible the
mind cannot understand, but God is faithful and has brought us to a safe place
at last.”
Dear
LORD God, may I be a safe place to each of your children today, a place of Your
love, Your comfort and Your mercy.
