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Running Amuck

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While Covid-19 fills the news and disrupts our lives, we are reminded, sadly, it is not the only illness running amuck. Racism remains an illness to the core of our nation. While Mike and I were out walking the other night a truck with Nebraska plates drove past down Main Street. In the window was a confederate flag—a blatant dog-whistle for white supremacy.

I asked Mike, “Why? Why would anyone think that’s okay?”

When we got home, I scrolled through my Facebook feed and first learned the name Ahmaud Arbrey. He’s the unarmed young black man who was shot and killed by white men, a father and son, while he was out running in his neighborhood in Brunswick, Georgia in February. At first the case was swept under the rug by local officials, but now, after good investigative journalism by the New York Times and a video of the killing became public, the case will be taken to a grand jury. Time will tell if there will be justice for Ahmaud. But no matter what, Ahmaud’s mother will never get to hug her son again. And, every young black man in the nation wonders now if he’s safe when he goes out for a run.

I’ve been to Brunswick, Georgia on vacation. It’s a lovely seaside town. But, obviously under the surface seen by tourists, there’s an ugliness there. A confederate flag in the window of a truck in Antelope County, Nebraska makes me wonder what about us? How deep is the infection of racism here? What will we do to stop its spread?

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia saying, “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28 NRSV). Ahmaud Arbrey was one of us. He went out running and now he’s dead.

Palm Sunday Prayers

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Hosannas do not ring out this year,

muffled behind masks, they whisper instead of shout.

The parade isn’t down streets of the city

but, shuffled in house slippers, and skipped down hallways by

children with more energy than room in the house.

 

Hosannas are not carried on the backs of donkeys during this pandemic,

rather, family pets, beloved dogs and cats carry the weight

of humble animal representation,

lumbering, loyal, faithful friends

bearing the burden of our loaded emotions.

 

Hosannas are not collective now. Ten-foot poles not palms are being waved.

Crowds are forbidden save in ICUs

where teams of humble heroes gather to rescue the perishing,

forcing breath though sluggish, congested lungs,

praying with paddles against heaving chests.

 

Hosannas used to mean to us “praise!”

Used to mean to us “triumph!”

Used to mean to us “we know the rest of this story and the ending is everlastingly good.”

Used to mean to us “Lent is finally over and Easter is only seven days away.”

 

“Hosanna” from quarantine whispers, “save.”

 

Hosanna, Save us.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD.

Great Physician, save us.

Healer of the Nations, save us.

God of all Creation, save us.

 

Brought to our knees by this disease

Our Palm Sunday prayer pleads,

Hosanna. God save us.

When Times are Tough and Hope is Lagging, Look UP!

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My Column for The Elgin Review, April 1, 2020

In my experience, sometimes manna from heaven looks more like a roll of toilet paper sailing over four stalls, trailing a beautiful white train behind it, than like some sort of bread miraculously provided for the people of Israel wandering out in the desert. If you aren’t familiar with the story of manna for the people of Israel, it’s in the book of Exodus in the Bible. It’s a story about God providing what God’s children need when times are tough and hope is lagging.

When I was a brand-new young missionary in Zaire, I’d been in our home for a week or so when I decided one of the things that I really needed was some fabric to make curtains for our windows. Pastor Efefe and the school’s driver agreed to take me to the city ten miles from our village where I could do some shopping. I’d selected my fabrics and was standing in a long line waiting to pay for my purchases when my gut clenched. Zairian food was not something I was yet accustomed to and my GI system was in full revolt. My need was urgent.

Bashfulness and modesty be damned, I turned to Pastor Efefe and asked in French “where is the restroom?” His eyes widened to match mine and he said, “we have to go to the church offices here in the capitol.” Grabbing the driver by the arm, we made quite a scene leaving the store. The clerk hollered from behind the counter, “Hey, where are you going? We’ve already cut the foreign woman’s fabric” And Pastor Efefe yelled in a loud, clear voice, “She’s got the runs! We’ll be back later.”

This is how bad my situation was; I wasn’t even humiliated.

We made it to the church offices, and Pastor Efefe pointed down the hall to the rest room. Never in all my days, neither before or since, have I ever been so thankful for a toilet. Sweet, sweet relief quickly turned to horror however, when I realized there was no toilet paper in the stall. There was nothing, and there was no one else in the restroom to ask for help. Minutes ticked by. I was contemplating tearing my cotton dress off a few inches above the hem and using that instead of paper when Pastor Efefe’s voice rang out from the hallway outside the restroom door. “Madame Le Pasteur” he hollered while opening the door, “en haut!” which means “up!” And there, like manna from heaven came that most blessed roll of toilet paper sailing through the air above me. I was saved.

It’s a funny story that came back to my mind because of the current toilet paper hoarding that’s going on due to Covid-19. Remembering the story now reminds me that God is always at work finding a way to provide us with what we need. Even when what we need is humbling and oh, so very human.

My friends, look up. We won’t always be in this situation. A day will dawn when this crisis is past and a brighter future is ahead of us. Look up! God’s help is on its’ way.

Park Congregational Church is worshipping by Zoom these days. Contact me at beckyzmmcneil@gmail.com and I’ll help you connect with us for worship.

 

Love, a Country Church and Covid-19

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My Column for The Elgin Review March 25, 2020.

We love our little country church. We love its bell tower and bell—Its rope recently repaired by Jon Grothe so Norman could ring it first to call us to worship on his confirmation day last spring. We love the timelessness of the church’s clean prairie design. We love how it sits proud, nestled in a grove of trees atop the little rise across from our graveyard, next to our playground, neighbor to Kinney cattle and Currie family fields. We love the church’s interior, the warmth of the well-worn walnut pews, the banners made by the Reddings hanging neatly, demarking the seasons of the church year, the burgundy curtains over the age rippled windows. We love the pretty old piano that Joann Anderson wakens from its weekday slumbers into full-voiced praise on Sunday mornings.  We love the cross that lights up above our chancel and the brass vases on the altar lovingly filled with flowers by Sharon Wilkinson. We love the plaque at the back of the sanctuary bearing the names of our congregation’s charter members, names that include Clarks and Kinneys and Curries, descendants of whom are still among our members today. We love our little country church.

But what we love more than all those truly lovely things, is each other. Sunday morning in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic we loved each other so much we kept away from each other and didn’t find our way to our little church on the top of the rise ½ mile south of HWY 70. Instead, we traveled a new way to find each other via Zoom, the online meeting application. Gwen Kinney connected with Zoom by landline while on speaker phone with her mother-in-law, Phyllis at The Willows in Neligh. Barb Henery and Sharon Wilkinson mastered new tricks of technology and video-conferenced in from the comfort of their homes in Elgin. Others called in on cell phones and landlines while Mike and I attended from the comfort of the parsonage in Neligh.

Our worship service wasn’t what we are used to. We didn’t sing hymns because they lag badly on Zoom. When we prayed the Lord’s prayer it wasn’t exactly in unison—our voices were like echoes and descants of each other’s. I shared scripture and some thoughts about the story and we passed Christ’s peace to each other, not by shaking hands, but by listening as each took a turn “checking in,” sharing how we are doing in the midst of social distancing and news about the pandemic. We prayed for each other and for our neighbors and when I’d given the benediction at the end of the service, I had tears in my eyes as I clicked the button on my computer to end our Zoom session for the day. God was truly with us.

Park Church isn’t our building, as lovely as it is. Park Church is people who love God, each other, and you, our neighbors. If you find yourself lonely, longing for community and connection during this challenging season, you are welcome here. For now, our services will be on Zoom. E-mail me at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com  or call me at 402.540.5615 and I’ll give you the link and instructions for meeting with us. If you’re having difficulty during this time, give me a call or send a text. I’ll try to help. God is with us. God is always with us.

A Very Present Help

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My column for The Elgin Review, March 17, 202

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. (Psalm 46:1-3,7 NRSV)

What a strange and disquieting thing it is to live on the front side of a silent, invisible disaster. Last spring, when the floods came to northeast Nebraska, the waters roared and foamed, the ice creaked and cracked in our rivers and our eyes could see the devastation unfolding around us. There was evidence of the danger at hand.

This spring Covid 19 threatens to roar over us like a world-wide flood, not of waters, but of disease and we cannot yet see it. Trucks whir past our houses down the highway. Children laugh and goof around on the sidewalks. Calves frolic in the fields. Everything feels so normal, and yet not. I don’t know about you, but the pit of my stomach feels funny.

Here in Antelope county, life around us goes on almost like normal for now. For my kids, living in other places, the spread of the virus and its threat is more real.

My son in New York City has been working from home since last week. He texted us his current fear is catching cabin fever. Usually he works on the 39th floor of one of the World Trade Center buildings. Now, his “office” is his large computer monitor in his very small bedroom in his small apartment shared with two roommates. He may be working from there for the rest of the spring.

My daughter-in-law just started working from home in Minneapolis instead of in the big corporate office where she usually writes software.

My son in Pittsburgh, PA drives Lyft for a living. He wonders how long he will be able to or want to continue to drive in close quarters with strangers who may be carrying the disease. He doesn’t want to get sick, but even more urgently he doesn’t want to become a vector for the spread of Covid-19. What if he gets it from one of his passengers, and before he knows he’s sick, spreads it around the city by driving people where they need to go? But, what will he do without income?

Last spring, when Nebraska flooded, we knew what to do. We looked out for our neighbors. We did what it took to rescue strangers. People worked hard to help each other out of harm’s way, and when the devastation was done, people helped with the clean-up, comforted those who grieved and helped each other get back on their feet.

With faith in God, and trust in our neighbors, we weathered the 2020 floods.

I’m confident we’ll do the same with Covid-19. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. Cancel your gatherings and trips and celebrations. Prepare but don’t hoard. Check in on your older neighbors. Hunker down at home. It won’t be forever, but forever God is with us.

If you’re feeling unsettled by this pandemic, if social isolation leaves you feeling sad, know that your neighbors at Park Congregational United Church of Christ stand ready to care for you. You can reach out to me at beckyzmcneil@gmail.com.

Walking with Jesus

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My Column for The Elgin Review 3.4.2020

For the first 199, 900 years of human history, give or take a few, we humans traveled, at our fastest, behind good carriage horses, about twelve miles per hour. Or, when walking, somewhere around five miles per hour. It’s only been in the past 120 years since the proliferation of the automobile that traveling sixty-five or seventy miles per hour is normal.

Think of how much more information we are asking our brains to take in and process now than humans ever had to process for almost all of human history before us.

And, for the first 199,950 years of human history, give or take a few, we humans saw and took in only what was around us in the natural world, or what we read on scrolls, or, after the invention of the printing press on a printed page. It wasn’t until the 1950s that we began watching moving images every day on tv, and not until the 1990s that we began to take into our brains mega pixels of information, sometimes for hours at a time, on our computers and smart phones.

Is it any wonder so many of us feel unsettled, harried and stressed much of the time? Is it any wonder Attention Deficit Disorder is rampant in our kids? Maybe in another hundred years our human brains will have time to adapt to the amount of information now being thrown at us, but right now, our evolution hasn’t really been given much time to catch up with our inventions.

For the past 1700 years, give or take, Christians have taken forty days before Easter to give something up in order to open room in our lives to reflect on how we’re doing in relationship with God and to make whatever adjustments we recognize we need to make. This season, called Lent, seems all the more important in our modern, media driven, fast paced age.

At Park Congregational Church our theme for Lent this year is “Walking with Jesus.” In our worship services we are thinking about where Jesus walked and what Jesus did in his ministry. In addition, we are actually walking. Every week I am suggesting different ways of walking our prayers during the week.  I am encouraging folks to give up some of our hurry and our information overload to slow and notice all the things we can see and appreciate at three or four miles per hour that we miss when we’re going somewhere between twenty-five and seventy miles per hour.

Whoever you are, wherever you are on life’s journey, I encourage you to take some time every day to get away from the steady stream of information overload. I encourage you to walk somewhere, noticing as you go things you cannot notice when you’re traveling at your usual pace. If you are a follower of Jesus, I encourage you to wonder as you walk what Jesus might notice or point out to you were he walking right there with you.

You are welcome to join us in worship, as always. Last week we “walked with Jesus into the wilderness of temptation.” This coming Sunday we’ll “walk with Jesus up a mountain of encouragement.” Worship is at 9:15, ten miles west of Elgin on Hwy 70 and ½ mile south.

 

Feels like Home

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My Column for The Elgin Review 2.12.20

One day when my youngest son was nearly one, he spent over an hour trying to fit five crayons into a little crayon box from Bob Evans restaurant that had room only for three. No matter how hard Ben tried, he couldn’t get all his crayons into that box.

On my 60th birthday last week, I came home to our little Lincoln apartment after attending a conference. Beautiful red roses from Mike were waiting for me in a Rubbermaid pitcher on our tiny kitchen’s counter. After finding a vase, arranging the bouquet and making it the center piece on our dining table, I sat on the sofa surveying the humble room. My feet were resting in my husband’s lap, the flowers he’d given me were just beyond him on the table.

“My fifties were wonderful.” I said. “I have no fears about turning sixty.” After I said it, Mike and I both laughed. In the decade that was my fifties, my father died, I had cancer, we fought and lost a battle with a developer who built big buildings on the property lines of ours and our neighbor’s homes ruining our views and robbing our privacy, one of our six kids kept us awake at night with worry for a couple of years straight, we moved twice and I suffered a deep betrayal culminating in job loss and a months-long depression.

Even so, my fifties were wonderful. Ten years ago, on my birthday when friends asked if there were any hints of romance in my life, I was happy to report, “Maybe—there’s a man with whom I’ve been corresponding and we plan to meet someday soon.” That man was Mike, and just over a year later we married.

Each of us was married before. Both of us worked hard at our first marriages. After twenty-two years his first marriage ended. After nineteen, mine was done. Heartbreak and defeat, sorrow and loneliness were feelings with which we were both well-acquainted. Years later, I remember how hard Ben tried with those crayons to make work what was not going to work, no matter how long he worked at it, no matter how hard he tried. That’s the way both Mike and I worked at our first marriages. No matter how long, no matter how hard we tried, they just didn’t work.

It’s not that way this time for either of us. Together Mike and I share an easy joy. Ten years into our relationship, each of us still lights up when the other walks in the room. We wake up next to each other in bed and when he’s right there beside me as I awaken, I giggle in delight. We are kind to each other and considerate. Marriage means doing our share of the hum-drum chores and navigating holiday plans and our six kids. Sometimes we get cranky when we’re hungry or tired. But, unlike before, being together doesn’t ever feel like work. Being together feels like home. If feels like happiness and love. Being together makes easier the hard times and more manageable the challenges that are inevitably part of every life.

Some of you reading this are saying, “Yes! That’s exactly the way we feel.” Lucky you!

Some of you are longing to feel this way. May God grant you patience and peace as you wait in expectant hope.

Some of you once knew this kind of joy, and are grieving the death of your beloved. May God console you and comfort you in the warmth of your memories.

Some of you doubt relationships exist that can make even cancer, death, betrayal and rebellious teenagers pale in the brightness of your love. May you come to believe the scripture which says, “With God all things are possible.”

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Snow Angels and other prayers

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They shuffle in, the first two with hair disheveled and bad dye-jobs, locks matted from too much time in their bunks. Faded florescent pink sweats hang baggy on their tattooed frames. Younger than my boys, I guess. Twenty-two, twenty-three perhaps. Another, older, rounder, with a short-auburn bob finds her place at the end of the table, quietly pulling out her chair. The fourth carries a thick red-leather, red-letter Bible in her willowy hands and wears her hair piled on top of her head. Her granny-glasses have lenses so thick her eyes precede her into the room, reminding me of a grasshopper–a very pregnant pink grasshopper. Her stomach swells taut against her sweatshirt, revealing her inside-out belly button below. She talks without stopping to breathe. At the end of this short parade comes a slim, tall woman with curly dark hair cropped like Peter Pan’s, slouching. There’s an energy of anger pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. A thin blue vein beneath her eye twitches in time to her heart beat. Intelligent eyes silently claim, “I don’t belong here” as she curls, like a fetus onto the rolling chair.

The women of the county jail are a motley crew.

I carry with me, on my coat and in my hair, the crisp, fresh smell of snow.

“We have snow!” I say, with the delight of the first blanketing of a season, when the crisp, cold freshness is still novel and exciting, and driving on ice and through snirt (snow mixed with dirt) hasn’t yet grown wearisome and disgusting. “It’s so pretty out there.”

Without windows, the women were unaware of the hushed beauty pillowing the landscape on the other side of the cinder blocks surrounding them.

“I love snow!”

“I wish I could see it!”

“The men may get to go outside to shovel it.”

“I’d love to see it falling from the sky.”

“I’d make a snow angel if I could.”

Five of the six of us laugh.

It is my first visit to the jail to share Bible study with the women. I didn’t know they couldn’t see the snow.

Around an oval conference table in a nondescript interior room, they tell me their stories. Meth and Crack and a parole violation. Dealing in several counties, and jail time awaiting in each one.

Grasshopper starts talking. Five babies taken away, but this one, this one, she is determined, this one, her sixth, (is she even twenty-five?) this one will be born drug-free. She’s going to give this baby the life he deserves. She knows God is with her always has been always will be she just needs to trust in Jesus and get back to church and doing what the Gospels teach and not listen to the people who are always trying to lead her astray and she may have had the other kiddos taken from her because of drugs but not this one because this time she’s getting into the Word and following the Way and she’s not messing up again no way and if the baby daddy doesn’t want to support her and wants her to get messed up again she’ll just leave this time that’s all there is to it because she knows she’s God’s precious child and so is this baby and this time it’s all going to be alright so she’s actually happy to be in jail because it means less time to be tempted to backslide and turn her back on God which she isn’t going to do this time. No way.

Bonnie weeps. When she finds her voice she says she misses her fourteen-year-old boy. She feels so guilty. She really messed up and he’s the one who’s paying the price. “A boy needs his mother. Mine really loves me.” She says. “I really messed up this time” and again she weeps.

Five of the six of us weep.

Stoney silence from Peter Pan.

We feast on stories shared from our lives and from God’s good book. Grasshopper sings, “Jesus Loves me.”

Five of the six of us sing.

Our hour draws to a close. Teeth are starting to chatter and blue goose bumps have risen on the bare thighs of the bleached blonde girl wearing prison issue pink shorts instead of sweats.

I ask how we can pray for each other. “For my boy.” “For this baby” “For my boyfriend” “For me and my court date on Wednesday.”  I ask them to pray for me and my churches and for my six kids.

Peter Pan unfolds her long limbs and uncurls her lips and for the first time speaks very quietly saying, “Pray for my daughters, they’re 16 and 17 and live in Detroit where I am a social worker with a Master’s degree. Oxycontin got me here and I want out.”

Six of the six of us pray.

I step into the blinding brightness of sunlight bouncing off freshly fallen snow.

I am free.

And, again, I weep.

Ordinary People

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My Column for The Elgin Review January 22, 2020

It was the coldest night of the year and the OB nurse reported to my insurance company she didn’t care what their current policy was, (dismissing new mothers and babies 24 hours after birth), she wasn’t about to send me and my 5lb 2oz baby boy into sub-zero temperatures. If the insurance company wouldn’t cover an additional night in the hospital for us, she would! The insurance company relented and allowed us to stay a second night.

Benjamin entered the world just before midnight on January 22, 1992.  He was three weeks early. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and ¼ of the placenta had died. If Ben hadn’t come when he did, odds are he would not have survived. Things didn’t immediately improve for poor Benjamin after he was born. Though he was not identified as a preemie, he was a tiny, tired little fellow. He was far more interested in sleeping than he was in eating.

After that “extra” night the nurse’s pleading gained us, I awakened in the hospital on the 24th with a high fever. A uterine strep infection kept the two of us in the hospital for the next week. Ben nursed lazily and my fever did a number on how much milk my body was making. When we finally went home, Benjamin, after a week in the hospital with me, was still considerably smaller than either of his brothers were when we took them home as newborns.

Five weeks later, Benjamin still hadn’t topped six pounds, so the pediatrician put him back in the hospital for “failure to thrive.” Unable to tolerate formulas, Ben was given bottles of my milk mixed with a high calorie supplement that cost $60.00 per day. In 1992 $60.00 per day was a fortune for a young family. Our insurance company said they would not cover it. “We don’t cover nutritional supplements” the customer service representative calmly told me. “But, it’s a prescription from his doctor and without it he will die.” I melodramatically, and truthfully, explained. She, still calmly, said she was very sorry, but that was their policy.

Fortunately, our insurance was through my denomination’s pension fund for ministers and the plan’s administrators went to bat for us and the insurance company relented. Ben received the supplements he needed. And now, as he turns twenty-eight years old this week, he’s six feet tall, still skinny as a rail, healthy as a horse, and living a good life in New York City.

I do not remember the names of the nurse, nor the pension fund administrator who effectively lobbied the insurance company on Benjamin’s behalf. But, on his birthday I give God thanks for them. They stepped up and spoke up on Ben’s behalf. Who knows? They may have saved my youngest son’s life.

What’s the moral of this story? There are at least three. #1. Happy Birthday, Benjamin! You are worth the worry you put us through. #2. Trouble with health insurance is not new in this country. It’s about time we make sure folks can get the health care they need. #3. God uses ordinary, everyday people, like OB nurses and pension fund administrators to save lives.

Everyday God uses ordinary people to make the lives of others better. For all of you who step up and speak up, thanks be to God!

God Will

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My Column for The Elgin Review 1.8.20

We gathered outside the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem in Israel. Ezra, our tour guide, knew I had a Bible in my pocket. “Becky, read Jeremiah 31:15.” Thus says the Lord; a voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.

We were in Ramah, near Jerusalem, where 2,400 years earlier Jewish mothers from all the surrounding area were forced to gather, separated from their children, to begin their sad sojourn into seventy years of captivity in Babylon. Then Ezra asked me to read the story in Matthew of Herod the King, raging mad upon hearing of the birth of a Jewish child (Jesus). Herod murdered all the Jewish babies from Bethlehem to Ramah to Jerusalem to be sure he’d done away with the one who might someday cause him trouble. The story, found right after the story of the wisemen and the star quotes the words of Jeremiah about bitter weeping in Ramah over lost children.

Inside the memorial it was dark, a hollowed-out cavern. It is circular with candles burning in its center and mirrors all around so the candles look like millions of stars reaching in all directions. Portraits of Jewish children killed in the Nazi Holocaust are projected on the walls. As our group moved in hushed solemnity, a voice read the names of every child known to have been murdered by Hitler’s regime. First name, Middle name, Last name. Age at death. Nationality. Read in Hebrew, in English and then in each child’s native tongue. It takes three months for all the names to be read out loud.

Overwhelmed, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I thought of my own sons; Adam Lawrence Zahller Brown 12 years old, American. Daniel Scott Zahller Brown, 10 years old, American. Benjamin David Zahller Brown, 9 years old. American. God, how can human beings be so cruel? How was it, that I was living in a time and place where my sons were safe, but other mother’s sons and daughters were not, are not, will not be?

Listening to the names, I wasn’t aware of the hall emptying-out. Their own mothers were not there to hear their names being spoken. I needed to listen on behalf of the parents whose beloved children were slain.

Eventually, one of the other ministers in our group touched me on my shoulder. “Becky, the rest of us are on the bus now, it’s time to go.”

I asked, “How can we leave? Who will listen to the names of the children?”

Quietly, my friend said, “God will.”

This part of the Christmas story doesn’t make it into carols, or on the front of cards. This part isn’t recounted in sweet pageants with darling children playing the parts. This part is so infrequently told, that those who make it to church only on Christmas and Easter, may not even know it exists.

Who wants to hear of a massacre of children while we’re still finding pine needles in our carpets and the candy canes haven’t all gone from our counter-tops? Who wants to think of Mary and Joseph and their little one, fleeing under the cover of darkness, alone and terrified as shouts of soldiers and cries of anguished parents pierce the silent night?

We don’t want to hear it, but we need to. Jesus’s followers need to know this story by heart. Our Savior was born poor and, though he was visited by kings, his parents had no choice but to flee in the dark of night, lest they be among the parents remaining in Ramah weeping. They were political refugees.

The story is as old as time; 2400 years ago, when the Jews were exiled to Babylon, 2000 years ago, when Herod killed the children, 75 years ago, when Jewish children were slaughtered, and today.

God hears the children’s names. God wipes the tears of the grieving parents. The question for us is will we?

Will we understand that every Jewish child growing up in this season of rising anti-Semitism is a child just like our Jesus? That every child fleeing danger and poverty who arrives on our nation’s southern border is a child just like our Jesus? Will we remember that every child in Iran, vulnerable to the whims and avarice of powerful rulers is a child just like our Jesus?

God hears the weeping in Ramah.

Will we?