Who's Guarding the Fold? | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Who's Guarding the Fold? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jude Harris
02/22/24
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

I live in southern town in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, just seven miles from the Mexican border. Though we are not featured as often in the news as some of the other border towns, we still have people swimming across the narrow strip of the Rio Grande River to illegally enter the United States. They have a fifty-fifty chance of either getting a welcome or an arrest when they drag their dripping wet bodies onto our shores. Since the federal and state government disagree on what to do with them, they’re either taken to a processing center or arrested and returned to where they came from.

Less than ten miles from my home, the processing center sits on several acres of land. Its windowless cinderblock buildings are heavily secured with wire fencing and guards. Here the newcomers exchange their fingerprints for gift cards, cell phones, and plane tickets. After a shopping spree they are escorted to the airport with airline tickets safely tucked in the highly recognizable manila envelopes. I imagine they must think they are blending in as they stand in the ticket lines, but no local can miss their designer tennis shoes and shiny new outfits.

The ones who don’t end up at the airport, wander our streets or congregate in the parking lots of the little motels they been brought to. Whenever I see them, I know them. Just like a foreign accent, they have accents in how they dress and in their facial expressions and movements. Wide-eyed, they wear the same look that stray animals have when they’ve escaped their own yard and are no longer in their own territory.

Strangers walk by my house during the day. There’s been a couple break-ins on our street recently and one was while the owners were asleep in their beds. I don’t feel comfortable on my quiet, oak-lined street, walking my dog before the sun comes up or after it goes down. The police are visible and friendly, but unless there is a crime they have no jurisdiction to manage who’s supposed to be on our streets and who isn’t.

I chatted with my friend who recently moved here from the Ukraine. Married to a Texan, she described her harrowing experience of legally entering the United States. She had moved from Ukraine to Canada to work for two years. Once married though, she had no way to enter from Canada legally and only after paying several thousands of dollars, traveling to Mexico, and taking a walk across a border bridge, could she enter the United States of America. At the crossing she endured hours of interrogation that included invasive searches of every orifice of her body. She received no gift card, plane ticket, cell phone, or welcome.

Where is our good shepherd? Who’s guarding our fold? People from around the world are climbing over and under the fences, swimming the river and coming in every way but through the gate. Our community huddles together, hoping the shepherd will use his staff or rod to protect them. Instead, he acts more like a hired hand and throngs of unknowns are invading our land. Vetting? There is no international standard of vetting to equal our own. The masses enter with blank spaces on their identification papers. Without a good shepherd, Texas has put up razor-sharp wire fences and made arrests, but they've stood alone.

Anyone coming into our country by any means except by the gate have come as a thief and a robber.

John 10:10 NIV
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber.”

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE

JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.