Today as I saw the news of children and families separated at the border it began to weigh heavy on my heart, and I realized that the weight was one that felt familiar to me through faith.
As I thought about the fore-families of my faith, my ancestors, I wondered what possessed the world to treat them so cold and ignore the injustices early LDS pioneers faced. Tarred and feathered, beaten and broken in the land of “brotherly love.”
Yes...They preached differently, they offered different scriptures, and yes, polygamy was illegal, but should their punishment have been persecution?
Governors passing laws that Mormon lives could, no should, be exterminated. Mothers burying children as families fled their homes again and again, until they finally sought refuge out West. They must have been bewildered as people turned a blind eye to their pain.
Our modern children sing each year, "Pioneer children sang as they walked..."; in reality, it was, pioneer children walking until their shoes wore out leaving blood on the ground, freezing and hungry and homeless. After all they had been through, even after they had settled far away in the desert west, still their families were threatened as many looked the other way. All this, in a country built on religious freedoms.
This is the legacy of my faith, this was a cost of my Christianity. They suffered for the Holy spaces I stand in today.
Why did the pioneers record their stories, and why do we still honor and recount their pain? So that their sacrifices will never be in vain, because we cannot unsee what they made certain that we were shown.
That is why my heart feels burdened by the border, because the burden is my own. Those the world refused to see begat a people who make covenant to never be blind. To have eyes opened by Christ, with hearts and hands aware, that another’s burden is also ours to bear.
As we consider the families that are being separated, let us please remember who we are, and who we once were. We are not diplomats we are DISCIPLES, called to DO what we wish the world would have done, and BE who we prayed others would have been when WE were where THEY are today.
“As members of The Church, we have a responsibility to preserve and protect the family as the basic unit of society and eternity.” — L. Tom Perry
I'm just sayin' 😢
😢😇😢😇😢😇
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