"I'll be with you when you dream..."

"Hush now my baby,
be still now, don't cry;
sleep as you're rocked
by the stream.

Sleep and remember
my last lullaby,
so I'll be with you
when you dream..."

Tonight, it is  "Deliver Us,"from The Prince of Egypt that is echoing though my heart.

This is not a political issue for me. This is not about red or blue, left or right, conservative or liberal. This is a human issue for me. Where is our humanity?

Children being ripped from the arms of parents seeking asylum from drug cartels, poverty, hunger -- it is more than I can take in and process. Who are we? Where do I live? It is unthinkable to me.

This is a humanitarian crisis of Biblical proportions. To cite Scripture in justifying this behavior is inconceivable. This is the same Bible that records Pharoah abducting babies from the arms of their mothers and slaughtering them. This is the same book that tells us of Herod's brutality in murdering a generation of male infants in his ego-maniacal desire to stifle the rise of the kingdom of Christ.

Isn't this what the Warsaw ghetto orphanages were filled with -- children who had been torn from the arms of their parents on the eve of the holocaust. Our history books have archived the stories of toddlers being taken from their mothers as each were herded into concentration camp barracks before their slaughter.

Slavetraders ripping children from their parents arms as they collared them in iron and shackled them in chains on the auction block. The dehumanization of a race. Have we learned nothing from our mistakes? Or are there those who think that some human being are less deserving of dignity, respect, and kindness than others. That some children are like the offspring of cattle or sheep and don't deserve to be treated humanely.

Who are we? What are we waiting for? In each of these situations the laws of the land allowed for these atrocities. In each instance, good men and women stood by feeling helpless and later horrified by having done nothing to stop what their hearts knew at the time was wrong and inhumane.

So, what do I do? How do I think? I feel a silent scream building in my heart. I find it hard to sleep. I imagine children already in a strange land being taken from the one person who has kept them safe through their exodus from the only home they have ever known to find security in a land of promise. I am haunted by their cries. The image of their tear-stained cheeks, the horror in their eyes, the hollow in their stomachs as they worry and wonder if they will ever see their mother or father again, keeps me keening on my knees in prayer.

So, how am I praying? This statement from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a good starting place:

"A mother's affection
cannot be weaned from her child
because the mother-love
includes purity and constancy
both of which are immortal.

Therefore maternal affection
lives on under whatever difficulties.”

In the horror of this historic moment -- that passage gives some comfort as I think about mothers, fathers, and children separated in a strange land. Parents without any way to confirm the well-being of their child. Children without any means for connecting with the only parent they have ever known. Caged like animals in a shelter.

I don't care which side of the aisle you sit on. This is "man's inhumanity to man." This is greed gone rabid.



But this isn't something we can search for in career guides or find in success-probability research polls. It is something we hear. But we don't hear it on the latest installment of Business News Nightly, or from a career counselor. We won't find it at a job fair, on LinkedIn, or in the pages of Forbes. We can only hear it in the deepest place - the place where Love speaks to our hearts. Paul refers to this "calling" in II Timothy:

"God hath saved us, and called us
with an holy calling, not according
to our works, but according to His own
purpose and grace,”

I love that. Not according to our works -- our efforts, our striving -- but according to his purpose and grace. I love the definition of grace that reads: "the unmerited and unearned favor of God." We are called into our holy purpose. We find it in the quiet space of listening for what is true and enduring in our hearts.  And sometimes, that calling may surprise us.

In referring to this calling, Mary Baker Eddy writes:

“We know that all things work together
for good to them that love God,
to them who are the called
according to His purpose.
What shall we then say to these things?
If God be for us, who can be against us?”

What a beautiful assurance. If we listen for our calling, and follow Love's behest in our hearts, who can be against us? Not even us. There is no self-sabatogue in the exercise of our calling. There is no resistance to our Love-impelled purpose. There is no sense of self-importance of self-doubt when we realize that this calling is not according to our works, but according to His own power and grace.

I will leave you with this passage from Eddy's earliest collection of published works, Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896:

“We have nothing to fear
when Love is at the helm of thought,
but everything to enjoy
on earth and in heaven.”

When our vocation aligns with our calling -- there is a clear sense of purpose, there is joy. We can sustain this vocation for an eternity, because it is Love-impelled. We rise each morning with a sense of being given the gift of grace. And who wouldn't want to do what they love each day?


offered with Love,

Kate