Daughter of the Mayflower

WHEN G-d decided to make me He pulled together a series of contradictions,
Jew-German, Irish-Polish, Russian
Ashkenazi-Sefardi-Mirakhi,
English-Dutch Pilgrim-Native American. And somewhere there is Austrailian Aborigines and Burmese.

IF you wanted to know what the American Melting Pot looks like, take a look at my face, but more take a look at my soul. I am the product of generations of people breaking the societal expectations. I am one of those who my ancestors prayed for when they landed on Plymouth Rock, and more earnestly when they were starving.

PRIOR to the great feast that Thanksgiving commemorates, the Pilgrims, a people seeking asylum from the religious constraints of England under King James, there was famine and sickness. There was a lot of death; the daily food ration was 5 kernels of corn, five. The hunger and the fear that these faithful mothers and fathers, husbands and wives can be set to the contrast of the less faithful. Alongside stories of my great...-grandmother Mary Allerton who tended to the sick, I also grew up knowing about the man who was so hungry he salted his wife and children and ate them. It didn't matter that he was hungry, he was also faithless and loveless.

PRESENTLY we live in a time that wishes to offer excuses to people who deal wickedly with others. We seek to understand what made a person the way he is rather than acknowledge a person;s responsibility for his actions. We often blame the Government, but we have no idea what oppression is like. We are not like the Christians suffering in Muslim countries, or Jews under Nazi Germany, or the Venesualians under their government who are starving to death this very day.

WE have a few splinters, and yes pain is pain no matter how infrequently it is felt. if a Splinter is all the pain you ever experience in life then yes, you have had pain. But consider what ought to be done in the midst of that pain. Many of my brothers and sisters are afraid, I honestly do not understand their fear, I am not afraid (says the Jew). But what I want to know is why we as the Church are so focused on fear? Why are my brothers and sisters asking me to validate their FEARS?

FEAR, like pain, is relative, you may not be going through the oppression of the Venesualian government but you believe that you are under a similar duress. I disagree because honestly you and I would not be able to handle that kind of duress. Honestly, some of the duress has been thwarted, but I won't go into that. I want to ask this question, are we of our hunger devouring those who depend on us or seeking to bring relief? Every man and woman are responsible for his or her actions no matter what their circumstances may be.

THIS incitement of fear, this desire to huddle together as the church and cry in fear of America's outcome is both ridiculous and shameful. Why? Because when you consider what other peoples have gone and are going through when you consider the division being cleaved when you look at my face and see a white girl who doesn't know hardship you are salting your family. You are becoming so consumed by your own pain and hunger, you are becoming so blinded by your fear that you have removed from my face the image of G-d.

YOU are only half right when you look at me that way when you despise my porcelain skin and green eyes, I haven't known hardship. Yes, I have been spit at on the streets, physically assaulted for being a Jew, the butt of racist remarks, threatened, cursed, mocked, all for believing that Jesus is the Messiah and that I am a saved Jew. But when I consider that in Syria my Arab brothers and sisters watch their children be beheaded because they hold on to the name of Jesus, or when I was in Rwanda and people walked two hours for water and never had a seen a more friendly country, or when I consider my complex DNA, and every people represented in it. I can say I have suffered but I don't know what that means, I honestly believe the only one who truly understands hardship and suffering is Messiah Yeshua. Because for me, every pain and every grief I ever endured was shared, shared with Him.

HE took the sin of the world on His shoulders, He took the grief and the suffering of everyone on Himself. My pain was His pain too, but His pain is not mine. I can't bear what He bore, neither can you. So let's stop looking at our own pain and remember those who are literally dying for the sake of the Gospel or who are dying having never heard of the hope they might have had in Messiah. Let's stop seeking social justice and begin speaking the Salvation of the L-rd. Kings and kingdoms fall and rise, Yeshua is risen and longing for us to rise with Him in an issue a bit more eternal yet wholly neglected. Tend to the sick and tell them why they need to live, why to keep breathing in the face of evil and hardship. Because every breath is a victory.

SHOULD we be unified in fear? No, my brothers and sisters, we are unified in Victory. We are all of us hungry, instead of salting your children and letting fear consume them. Teach them to tend to the sick fearless of catching an infection themselves and hopeful that they might bring healing. Teach them to plant crops and to show others how to plant corn inside of fish. Because in the end, we will have a glorious feast, Together.

G-d Bless America.