Foreigner

Foreigner

The LORD protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.

“WHAT ARE YOU MAKING for Dinner Buddies?” I sent the WeChat message to my friend Li Zhang.

“I’m bringing one of my favorite dishes. I don’t know . . . you might not be able to handle the heat.”

“What? Bring the heat! I can handle it.” Snickering softly to myself, I knew my bold proclamation had my friend laughing. We both knew her palate was accustomed to far hotter foods than my Midwestern taste buds, and she loved to bring various spicy dishes to test just how much heat I could handle before conceding that something was simply too hot to eat.

We fell into the Dinner Buddies idea quite by accident during my friendship with Li, and the roughly weekly tradition has continued for years, involving a succession of visiting Chinese interns, scholars, and teachers as they come for a year or two as part of our school’s immersion program before returning home. We take turns making food we consider “traditional” to our cultures and then enjoy dinner together, building the bonds of friendship, exploring one another’s cultures through food and conversation, finding a safe place to ask hard questions of one another.

My friendships with people-not-from-here through our immersion program but also through our increasingly diverse community are some of my most precious friendships. As my friends quietly confess stories of verbal abuse because of their accents, clothing, skin tone, or cultural practices, my heart breaks. When my friends are treated abominably because they are refugees, having fled a home filled with bloodshed and trauma that I cannot fathom, by people who proclaim to love and follow Christ, I wonder how the church has gotten it so wrong. Joseph fled with Mary and baby Jesus to Egypt—refugees seeking protection, before they were called back home. There are countless times in Scripture and in the history of the church in which the Israelites and, later we as Christ-followers, were and are the foreigners, the ones seeking refuge in a different land. God is for the foreigner. God is for the refugee. And he calls us to be welcoming, generous, and kind to those far from home. We will find ourselves blessed by the richness of those friendships.

Lord, help us to be intentionally welcoming to those who are far from their original home. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: If you live near a college or university, contact the school about hosting a visiting student for an American holiday.