Orlando-area churches pack 103 backpacks for children of detained and deported parents

What happened

Volunteers from eight churches in the Orlando area have been packing backpacks for children whose parents have been detained or deported by federal immigration officials, Religion News Service reported on Oct. 16. According to RNS, the backpacks hold necessities and comfort items. Since May, church members have bought the items for 103 of them and packed every one by hand. They prayed over each bag before it went out through four partner community organizations that serve immigrant families directly.

The churches were organized by the Central Florida Micah Movement, which RNS described as an Orlando-area Christian network formed in the last year to stand in solidarity with immigrants. RNS reported that the group draws on the biblical command to “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.”

Organizers told RNS the project had two goals. The first was aid to children in need. The second was to activate Christians, especially white or English-speaking evangelicals, who organizers say have stayed on the sidelines of helping immigrants as mass deportations have ramped up.

The idea came from Kirsty Ortega, a member of Summit Church, an interdenominational congregation with locations in Orlando and Lake Mary, according to RNS. Ortega told RNS that community groups serving immigrants “often feel really helpless because of the lack of funding.” The full RNS report, linked above, has more on what organizers hope comes after the backpacks.

Our reflection

“Comfort items” is a gentle phrase for a hard thing. Nobody packs comfort for a child with nothing to grieve. Each of those 103 backpacks went to a home where a parent is missing from the table. Whatever a person believes about immigration law, the child did not write it, and the child is the one lying awake under it.

The organizers named a second wound, and this one is ours. They want to reach Christians who have stayed on the sidelines. I know that seat. It feels neutral, which is why it is comfortable. We say the issue is too political, or that someone closer will handle it. Some of that is honest caution. A lot of it is fear dressed up as prudence, a way to keep our distance from pain that would cost us something.

A lawyer once asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Luke says he asked it “desiring to justify himself” (Luke 10:29). That is the sideline question. It sounds like a request for clarity and works like a fence. Jesus answered with a story about a man beaten and left on the road. Two religious men saw him and crossed to the other side. The one who stopped was a Samaritan, the outsider his listeners were raised to avoid. Then Jesus turned it around. The lawyer wanted to know who qualified for his love. Jesus asked who proved to be a neighbor, and told him to go and do likewise.

Jesus knows this road from the inside. His own family fled by night into Egypt when he was small, out of reach of a king who wanted him dead (Matthew 2:13 to 15). When a stranger in Orlando prays over a backpack for a child she will never meet, Jesus says the gift landed on him (Matthew 25:40). That is conviction with an open door. If you have been on the sideline, repentance is simply the next step toward somebody.

What I respect about the Orlando model is how small and copyable it is. Eight churches. Four community groups already serving families, groups Ortega said feel helpless for lack of funding. The churches went to the people already on the road and asked what they needed. A backpack will not bring a parent home. It does give a congregation a reason to learn the names of the people doing this work, and that is usually where the sideline ends.

We see the weight of an empty chair at home in the young people we sit with. Miami has them. So do Chicago and Houston. One gift has never been the fix. Adults who keep showing up are.

So start with something you can hold. Pray for the children who opened those bags. Ask your pastor whether your church could stand with a group near you that already serves immigrant families, then stay long enough to learn what they need.

"Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

Luke 10:36-37

Source: Religion News Service (RNS), “Florida churches turn backpack drives into a gateway to immigration advocacy”