“He is an American citizen, but he wasn’t born here. He’s from some other country.” I was only half paying attention, but it was her tone that caught me. Dismissive. Contemptuous. As if that explained everything, the young man who came from Somewhere Else to wreak havoc and destruction, because our own young men would never do such a thing. As if we were made of different flesh and blood in this country.

And suddenly I wanted to say that he is made of exactly the same stuff as us– that at the core we are of the same genetic material handed down from our first father and mother, and citizens of the same realm of Darkness. This boy grew up here, was educated in our schools, won scholarships and dreamed of the future just like our own children, and is he not our own responsibility? How is he so very different from any of us, and how are our own sons and daughters immune from the string of seemingly trivial choices, mile-markers that shape who we are becoming even though we don’t have the eyes to see it?

It made me want to weep outright, never mind that we were in public, in a crowd, and I hardly knew her. That young man, younger than my own, with his dark serious eyes and thoughtful face, now certainly panicked and grieving– how did his heart get him here? What choices had he made, one step at a time, till there was no turning back and he was running for his life? “He won’t come out of this alive,” she went on decidedly…“they’ll hunt him down and kill him before this is all over.” And isn’t death waiting for us all, apart from God’s grace, because we all carry the same bent nature? It could so easily have been my children out there on the streets, deserving the anger and censure of others.

I wanted to tell her that the only thing that makes us different is being born into a new Family, the only citizenship that matters is the one in an unseen Kingdom, the eternal country that Abraham was looking for. And until we are safely Home there is no real safety. But it was not the place to say any of that, and she would not have understood anyway. So I pray tonight for the mothers of lost children, and the sons who walk in darkness, and the daughters who are making choices that will lead them on many hard roads…from every country on earth, because we are all the same under Heaven and all so in need of Grace.

I pray that this boy would live, and that he would find both healing and justice; I pray for second chances because none of us deserves one, but there is a Savior who keeps offering one.

“Everyone needs compassion. A love that’s never failing. Let mercy fall on me. Everyone needs forgiveness. The kindness of a Savior The hope of nations …” (Mighty to Save, Hillsong)