I am a commuter student and have not had the change to be with my fellows students outside of the classroom…so it was good to get to know them while we made our journey down south. Today has left me unsettled.   It has made me wrestle and ask hard questions of myself and more importantly of God.  After talking with Paul, the pastor at San Lucas, my brain has been on overload.

  Here is what swimming around in my brain:

• Why do we use the word illegal alien?  Is this the best description of what we are talking about?  Why is there a push to use undocumented worker instead of illegal alien?  What political weight do each of these terms use?  What theological claims do each of these hold?
•   Is there a different between a border and boundary? Does one reveal more of God’s heart than the other?  What does it mean to say yes to a border?  A boundary?  What does it mean to say no to a border? A boundary? What implications do each of these hold as we stand on the footsteps on the Rio Grande?
• How have we traditional defined mission work?   Go, do, build and return.  What is the difference between mission work and a partnership?  What are the limitations with doing traditional mission work?  Is it possible to rethink how we traditionally view our role in sending?  What does it look like to find family and do missions relationally? 

So, you could say that today was a good…but being good doesn’t mean that it was easy.  Today we had to look inside and ask who is my neighbor?  This is one of the fundamental questions of the Text and needs to be one of the questions that we constantly wrestle with.

John Hinkebein