Bridges and Burdens

Five of us sat around a table this morning at our office on the border between the United States and México. We talked and questioned and prayed.  We're maybe five of the least likely people you would imagine to be here, except all you know us as is Casas por Cristo.  Honestly, we are nothing more than everyday people that grew up thousands of miles away from this world that we now know.  Yet somehow, the questions in our hearts and the burdens that we feel are for the millions of people living across the border in México.

Somehow these people have changed us, they have broken us, they have become the reason that we've given up our "normal" lives to move here and serve with our whole lives.  And with that, we feel the burdens of the people that we serve.  Every day we cross back and forth between a world of poverty and a world of affluence.  Some days it has become so normal that we don't think twice.  Yet others, we lay awake in bed and can't shake what we've seen.

What we feel right now are the burdens of our friends across the border.  We feel the weight of the tap on our shoulder from a neighbor asking how they can receive a home too.  We feel the look in a mother's eyes when she asks if we have one more blanket to give, when we've just handed the last one away.  We can almost hear the sobs that come from the single mother with three kids, that doesn't want to dance for money, but will do anything to feed her family.

We sit here this morning carrying the weight of their stories, the looks in their eyes, the touch on our shoulders.  We're praying and questioning and seeking what to do.  We're wondering how we can get the world that we see, that is so far away from your home in Kansas or your workplace in Colorado, into your minds and hearts too.  We don't know why we felt led here.  We don't know why God burdened our hearts to make this place home and Casas por Cristo our life.  But we are here.  And in these moments it feels like we are a bridge; some sort of a segue between two completely different worlds.

We want you to know what we see.  We want you to know what we feel.  We're asking you to carry these burdens with us.  We believe as Christ followers that we have a responsibility to pray and care for the poor and the needy.  We know that our hearts have been burdened to open others' eyes to what they might not see.  We believe that you, as our brothers and sisters across the country have a responsibility to care just the same.

So today, we're asking you to pray with us.  We're asking you to seek with us.  We're asking you to do whatever it is that God has called you to do as part of this story that we all find ourselves in.  Thank you for being a part of Casas por Cristo and even more, for being a part of God's story with us.