Okay, I probably ought to start this post by saying: people send me pictures about Jesus and about God. Sometimes they are devotional. Often they are crass and obnoxious. Usually the funniest ones are the latter. I collect ’em all, and I will keep posting new ones under “jesus stuff” (or the God file) as long as I have them. If you are offended by what you see… remember that I’m not laughing at real piety or real devotion–I’m laughing at the ways in which my loved ones (many of whom are not believers) send me things from their world to see how I react. And I love them all, and I believe that God does as well. If you are offended today, perhaps tomorrow you’ll see something that touches your life.

**EDIT** since I started this post, it’s turned into another kind of rant, so you may be offended by the politics of it as well. See above comment…

Onward… I’d forgotten I had this one in the file, but it comes at a time when xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment is changing the way we do things in this country. You can be arrested for giving water to people dying of thirst in the desert, because they “don’t belong.” The Supreme Court is reported to be sympathetic to the draconian laws drafted in Arizona, Georgia, and other states mandating, among other things, that police check for identification papers any time they “suspect” someone might be here illegally… opening the door for a whole new kind of harassment of citizens and non-citizens alike. In the Northeast, where I live, there are no longer “dedicated” detention centers for the undocumented, so they are detained in regular prisons until their hearings… often without understanding why they are there, often without the ability to contact family members.

And yet… Georgia’s fruit and vegetable industry lost money in the billions last year, because they passed these laws that made the undocumented workers unwelcome. And as it turns out, those people were the basis of the industry. The people who picked the fruit and cleared the crops were undocumented workers who move across farm country in a sweep, taking jobs no one else wants. It’s backbreaking labor, for many hours, and the pay is negligible. The seasonal workers did it gladly, because they needed the work, and we all reaped the benefits in the form of fresh fruit, fresh seasonal produce, and better health because of both.

It’s going to turn out the same way in other places, in other industries, because we don’t see and don’t know (and don’t want to know) how much of the work that needs to be done, that our lives depend on, is done by people who are here without the proper authorization, working for a better world for their families and incidentally, making our lives better along the way.

I’m not arguing for a particular set of policies or a particular program here–I don’t have any answers. But I do have a lot of questions, and one of them is this: can we see the face of Jesus of Nazareth in those seasonal and undocumented workers who bear his name? Is our gratitude to him for what he has given us great enough to extend that far? And can we recognize that when we eat the fruit of their labor, we incur a debt of gratitude to them for doing the work no one else will do?

It’s easy to say “thank you, God” and think we’ve closed the loop. It’s much harder to accept that gratitude reaches beyond itself, and sees that God’s work on earth is done by human beings, and we cannot show God that we are grateful without extending our hands to those God loves.

Next time you find yourself complaining about the problems “those people” cause, think about the ones they solve, and try being grateful and hospitable–for Jesus’ sake.