Praying With the Headlines

In the season of Lent, or the approximately six weeks leading up to Easter, Christians often take on practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in order to grow closer to God through repentance and renewal. One way we can engage in prayer though this season is through intentional prayer for others, particularly the marginalized and impoverished among us.

So often, we breeze through the news, unable to absorb the tragedy contained in our headlines. This Lent, we invite you into the practice of slowing down and praying with headlines, particularly about immigration. We will use the news as a medium to imaginatively pray with and for our immigrant brothers and sisters – and so grow in love, compassion, and nearness to God and one another.

Praying With the Headlines: Families Separated at the Border

Begin by adopting a posture of prayer, wherever you are. Sit back, relax your body, and take a few deep breaths.

Breathe in, breathe out. Know you are in the presence of God.

God, we ask you to help slow our minds and expand our hearts to attend to the suffering of our immigrant brothers and sisters.

Now read the passage from this news story from the Los Angeles Times slowly.

"Jeyson's family fled, forgetting a suitcase that contained all their spare clothes. Jeyson’s wife has since managed to secure a single appointment for next month. Their new plan is for her to go alone and Jeyson to stay behind with their children until he can get three additional appointments. 'We already risked it all,' he said. 'What can we do? We are hopeful that we can get three appointments. Three, in the end, is less than four.'

Advocates said some parents are making the decision to leave their children in the care of extended family or friends and keep their appointments with CBP. Jeyson said another couple from the tent encampment did just that, leaving their five children at the border bridge and entering the U.S. after managing to get only two appointments...'Family separation has never stopped. The only difference here is that CBP One is now doing it instead of the other ways it’s been done since 2018.'”

Picture yourself in a tent on the Mexican side of the border. Huddled together with your family as you try to keep warm in the late winter. You arrived in Ciudad Juárez weeks ago after a months long journey from Honduras, and you've been trying ever since to figure out how to get an asylum appointment in the U.S. with no luck.

A friend that you made recently just came back from the bridge that goes over into El Paso with news that now the only way to apply for asylum is to download an app from the U.S. Government. He tells you that he was able to use the app to get an appointment for his wife and daughter but not for himself. He will have to stay in Mexico while the rest of his family seeks a new life in the U.S. where they will wait and hope he gets an appointment too.

It's all too overwhelming to bear with so many mixed emotions. In the moment, you're happy for new friends who may get some measure of safety, but you're sad for your friend who will have to be separated from the rest of his family. And then you start to think about yourself. You only have one phone between the whole family and it is hard to find the money for a phone charger and service.

Will you be able to get an appointment for everybody?

Or will you be forced to be separated from your family too?

Breathe in, breathe out. Try to imagine the pressure and stress these families must feel as they make these tremendously difficult decisions that may lead to them being separated from their families.

Recognize how unfair and unjust this all is. Exhausted people fleeing dangerous and violent situations only to be confronted with a decision that might tear their family apart across two countries. They are condemned to live in a world with few good choices.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Hold these families facing separation and isolation across the world in your mind and heart.

Remember those, named and unnamed, who yearn to be with their loved ones, but have no means to do so.

Remember those, named and unnamed, who have died while trying to reunite with their family in a dangerous and unjust situation.

Remind yourself that God knows each of their names and their stories, and loves them deeply.

Offer up the prayers you have for these families in great need.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Open your eyes when you are ready.

Amen.