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: Child Migrant Workers

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 New York Times slowly.

"Federal law bars minors from a long list of dangerous jobs, including roofing, meat processing and commercial baking. Except on farms, children younger than 16 are not supposed to work for more than three hours or after 7 p.m. on school days.

But these jobs — which are grueling and poorly paid, and thus chronically short-staffed — are exactly where many migrant children are ending up. Adolescents are twice as likely as adults to be seriously injured at work, yet recently arrived preteens and teenagers are running industrial dough mixers, driving massive earthmovers and burning their hands on hot tar as they lay down roofing shingles, The Times found.

Unaccompanied minors have had their legs torn off in factories and their spines shattered on construction sites, but most of these injuries go uncounted. The Labor Department tracks the deaths of foreign-born child workers but no longer makes them public. Reviewing state and federal safety records and public reports, The Times found a dozen cases of young migrant workers killed since 2017, the last year the Labor Department reported any.

The deaths include a 14-year-old food delivery worker who was hit by a car while on his bike at a Brooklyn intersection; a 16-year-old who was crushed under a 35-ton tractor-scraper outside Atlanta; and a 15-year-old who fell 50 feet from a roof in Alabama where he was laying down shingles."

Picture yourself working out in the fruit fields with the sun beating down as you fill large baskets full of strawberries. Some of your coworkers are teenagers - even children - working right beside you. They just arrived in the country a few months ago and haven't missed a day of work yet.

Even if they carry injuries or illness, nothing slows them down. They don't have many safe options and can't afford to miss a day of work if they want to support themselves and their loved ones.

Breathe in, breathe out. Try to imagine the pressure and stress these children must feel as they risk life and limb just for a small chance at a new life. Think how exhausted they must be as the long hours and backbreaking work compound day after day.

Recognize how none of this exploitation should be happening. The thousands of kids who toil in situations like these have few options, and the companies know they can get away with it. These children are stuck in a cycle of abuse as they work towards a future that too often is cut tragically short.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Hold these migrant children across the country in your mind and heart.

Remember those, named and unnamed, who have been gravely injured or even killed while trying to make their way in a dangerous and exploitative world.

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

"Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"
- Matthew 6:26 -

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

Breathe in, breathe out.

Open your eyes when you are ready.

Amen.