Happy 4th, I hear, standing in the grocery store line with my hotdogs and ice-cream, ready for a fire-worked-up day, thinking, this July 4th, I have told a border story — Reseda.
I hold several in my heart. So do you.
Only Native Americans, with trails of tears and buried hearts and wounded knees, can claim no border history. The rest of us all crossed a border, we ourselves, or generations past. Some seeking. Some suffering. All of us in need.
For all of us, when we stand hand-over-heart in the gleaming twilight, proudly hailing broad stripes and bright stars, it’s there. Need.
I remember the day Bob and I became American citizens. A day and a night of arranged child care for our babies, a trip to Albany, a walk on a sidewalk. What to expect for an appointment like that?
Expectation framed by decades of diligent visa applying and and lettered status carrying and wary border crossing.
“Citizenship?”
“Canadian.”
“Any fruit on board”
“No, sir”
“Open your trunk.”
And the shock on Bob’s face enough that they let us keep that basket of strawberries. Evidently, I needed those berries.
I stand in need.
Expectation framed by mandatory study of three dry books proclaiming America’s history, and a moment behind a wooden desk and us newly aware that a trinity of judges and legislators and executives lead this land of checks and balances, and freedom, and refuge.
There is need.
Expectation mixed a jittery belly-shiver of fear, that no, we’d been turned away, with a dry declaration from behind a desk that yes, we’d made it into the land of the brave and the free. I wore my good jeans.
Never expecting what we came to know, that day we became American citizens, standing next to wild, firework-day-worthy, celebratory waving of two-flagged fists, seeing teary-eyed gratitude dressed in best burkas, bright saris, bleach-white turbans, and finest skirts and scarves and sashes. Hearing broad, bright cheers of generational entourages just a balustrade away. That day, teared-up and humbled and wearing jeans, we met America the beautiful.
There is need.
This land? When God blasts it into His holy, cosmic firework display all the way to kingdom come? We all need a better border story.
Jesus is writing the real border story. Have you let Him include your name?
Philippians 3:20 [ESV] But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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