What Would Jesus Do?
He Would Not
Abandon the Children

by Rev. Sheri Spiritual teacher, writer, and founder of Angel Messenger

Every time I speak publicly about suffering, someone twists my words into something I did not say.

Compassion is recast as hatred. A plea for human dignity becomes a political accusation. People search for one sentence they can pull apart while ignoring the children at the center of it all.

But I have to speak for the children.

Even if my words go nowhere but into the void, I will still speak them.

The void is not empty.

The void is where creation lives.

And so I send these words—and all the light within them—into creation for the children.

Children Should Not Stand Alone

Thousands of children who entered the United States without a parent or guardian may now be left without meaningful legal protection.

For years, a network of nearly 100 legal-aid organizations helped children navigate our immigration system. That arrangement has now expired, and a $150 million contract has instead been awarded to a single law firm with limited publicly listed immigration experience.

Approximately 1,800 children are currently in shelters, while thousands more are living with sponsors as their cases proceed.

Unlike criminal court, immigration court does not guarantee a person an attorney—not even when that person is a child.

Children who may not understand our language, much less our legal system, can be expected to stand before a judge while decisions are made that could alter the course of their entire lives.

Whatever we believe about borders or immigration policy, no child should be required to stand alone in a courtroom and defend their right to safety.

Children are not political weapons.

They are not bargaining chips.

They are not deterrents.

They are not case numbers or problems to be processed.

They are children.

What Would Jesus Do?

We ask this question so often that the words can lose their meaning:

What would Jesus do?

Jesus welcomed children when others tried to push them aside.

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.”
—Mark 10:14

Jesus placed a child at the center of His followers and said:

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”
—Matthew 18:5

He then gave one of the strongest warnings in Scripture about causing harm to a little one.

Jesus defended the rejected. He confronted hypocrisy. And when people corrupted something sacred for their own power and profit, Jesus flipped the tables.

When I look at what is happening to children now, I imagine Jesus standing among us and flipping those tables again, crying out:

“You are wrong! All of you are wrong! Your hearts are wrong, and your words are lies! If you claim the name of Christ and then turn your back on frightened children because their skin is brown, their family crossed a border, or they were born somewhere else, you are not following the true Christ. You are following your own fear, prejudice, and ego.”

Those are not words recorded in Scripture. They are what I imagine Jesus might say to a society that invokes His name while abandoning the children He commanded us to welcome.

That may not be the gentle, comfortable Jesus some people prefer to picture. But Jesus was not always gentle with those who used religious authority to justify harm.

If our version of Christianity requires us to stop recognizing certain children as children, something has gone terribly wrong with our Christianity.

A child does not become less sacred at a border.

A frightened child does not become undeserving of protection because of their parents’ choices.

A brown child is not less precious to God than a white child.

No law, political slogan, government designation, or immigration status can erase the image of God within them.

We Have Walked This Road Before

This is not only about Donald Trump.

It is not only about one administration, one political party, or one moment in history.

This is part of a much older American legacy.

I recognize this road because my ancestors were forced to walk it.

I have Native ancestors. Through that ancestry, I bear witness to the legacy of this nation trying to violate, brutalize, and erase those it considered different.

Native children were taken from their families and sent to boarding schools. Their hair was cut. Their names were taken from them. Their languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions were forbidden. Many endured physical and sexual abuse. Many never returned home.

The United States Department of the Interior has identified 417 federal Indian boarding schools across 37 states or territories. Its investigation confirmed that at least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children died while attending those institutions. At least 74 marked and unmarked burial sites have been identified.

America has a history of trying to rape away the “different.”

Those are difficult words, but gentle language cannot contain the truth of what was done.

Native children were not the only ones subjected to this nation’s machinery of forced removal and confinement.

During World War II, the United States forcibly removed more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes and communities and confined them in incarceration camps on American soil. Approximately two-thirds of those taken were American citizens.

They had not been charged with crimes.

They were imprisoned because of their ancestry.

Families were given little time to dispose of their homes, farms, businesses, and belongings. Many lost nearly everything they had spent their lives building.

They were first taken to temporary “assembly centers,” often located at racetracks and fairgrounds. Some families were forced to live in converted horse stalls. They were then transported to remote, fenced, and guarded camps surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers.

They lived in hastily constructed barracks that provided little privacy or protection from the elements. Some structures had dirt floors; others had wood, concrete, or asphalt. Many were poorly insulated. Summers could be unbearably hot, and winters bitterly cold.

The government used reassuring words such as “relocation” and “evacuation,” but these were not voluntary journeys to safer homes.

People were taken.

Families were uprooted.

American citizens were imprisoned without trial.

Their property was lost while the country told itself that their confinement was necessary.

And now I recognize the pattern again.

Brown people are being stopped and taken from streets, workplaces, homes, and communities. Even U.S. citizens have been detained or targeted during immigration operations. Families are living in fear, while children placed in government care are entirely dependent upon the institutions exercising power over them.

The histories of Native boarding schools, Japanese American incarceration, and today’s immigration system are not identical. I will not erase the distinct suffering of any people by pretending they are.

But I will not ignore the pattern connecting them.

First, a group of human beings is presented as dangerous, foreign, inferior, or undeserving.

Then fear is cultivated around them.

Their rights become conditional.

Their families become disposable.

Government language disguises what is being done.

Finally, children are harmed while much of the country looks away—or insists that their suffering is necessary for someone else’s safety.

The facilities may change.

The official terminology may change.

The uniforms and government agencies may change.

But the question remains:

How many times will this country imprison people it has marked as “different” before we recognize the road we are walking?

When brown skin, an accent, a workplace, a neighborhood, or an ancestry can make someone a target, citizenship papers do not erase the danger.

Once a government teaches its agents—and its people—to see a person’s appearance before their humanity, none of us should pretend that only the “right people” will be taken.

I know what happens when a nation looks away.

I know what happens when children disappear behind institutional walls while authorities insist that everything happening inside is necessary, lawful, or for their own good.

We have walked this road before.

We know where it leads.

We must stop before we travel any farther.

Then Let Me Play the Fool

A border agent once called me an idiot for defending immigrant children.

Then let me be called an idiot.

Let me be mocked, condemned, or dismissed.

I will continue walking upon my Good Red Road.

If that makes me foolish in the eyes of cruelty, then I will gladly play the Fool.

In Tarot, the Fool is not merely foolish. The Fool is the traveler—the journeyman who steps forward in faith, carrying little except an open heart and the willingness to follow the road into the unknown.

I know where I choose to stand.

I stand with the children.

I stand with the mothers and fathers who have had children taken from their arms.

I stand with every child who has cried for a parent behind a locked door.

Call me whatever you choose.

I will still speak for the children.

A Prayer to Protect the Children and Stop the Harm

Creator, God, protect these children.

Surround them with the Light and Love of all that is Good and Real.

Let them feel something holy beside them when they are frightened and alone. Let them be seen. Let them be lifted up. Let the funds and resources needed for genuine relief find their way into compassionate hands.

May angel light always remain visible to these children.

Surround them through their darkest hours. Guard the tender places within them. Do not let cages, cruelty, abandonment, or fear destroy their ability to love, dream, and trust.

Do not let what has been done to them ruin their hearts.

Remind them that the cruelty they have experienced does not define their worth.

And stop those who would harm them.

Stop them in their tracks.

Stop them before it is too late to change the road we are traveling.

Let humanity see what we have permitted. Let us see how often we have dismissed warnings, excused powerful men, protected reputations, and allowed those with influence to escape accountability while children carried the wounds.

We taught people that power could place a man beyond consequence. We watched cruelty become performance and accountability become partisan. We allowed concern for children to be ridiculed whenever protecting them threatened someone powerful enough.

Now that same moral failure is reaching deeper into the machinery of government.

Children placed in government care—children entirely dependent upon adults for food, shelter, safety, legal protection, and human kindness—are being treated as though their suffering does not matter.

Creator, make us see what we have done.

Do not allow us to hide behind political parties, government agencies, uniforms, religious labels, or carefully chosen words.

Break through every excuse we have used to avoid the truth.

Let every cruel plan collapse beneath the weight of its own injustice. Let harmful orders be challenged, delayed, overturned, and rendered impossible to carry out.

Let paperwork intended to separate families become lost in the machinery.

Let unjust systems falter.

Let the money required to sustain cruelty disappear while resources for rescue, legal protection, and genuine relief multiply.

Let truth reach the people who still possess the authority to intervene, and give them the courage to act.

May it seem as though Mercury itself has turned backward for ten thousand years against every plan intended to harm a child.

Let nothing work as intended.

Let deception be exposed.

Let collaborators refuse.

Let doors close.

Let plans unravel.

Let every pathway toward cruelty become impassable.

Remove from power those who knowingly harm children and those who knowingly allow that harm to continue. Place compassionate people in their path—advocates, attorneys, judges, journalists, caregivers, witnesses, and protectors who will not be intimidated into silence.

I will not ask Heaven to bless plans that harm children.

I will not ask angel light to illuminate the road toward cruelty.

May that light remain elusive to anyone seeking to harm a child until they turn away from harm, recover their humanity, and choose another path.

This is not a prayer for vengeance.

It is a prayer for intervention.

Creator, stop them.

Protect the children.

Let love become stronger than the cages built to contain it.

We cannot say we did not know.

The children are here.

They are crying now.

And I will speak for them.

Amen.

And One More Truth

Before anyone closes this page, there is one more fact I want every Christian—and every person defending what is happening—to consider:

Jesus was brown.

Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jewish man born in a land occupied by an empire.

He was not the pale, blue-eyed European figure Western culture has painted for centuries. He would have had the features, hair, eyes, and skin of the people whose homeland He inhabited.

The Holy Family also knew what it meant to flee danger with a child. Mary and Joseph carried Jesus into Egypt to protect Him from a ruler willing to kill children to preserve his own power.

Jesus was a brown child carried across a border by frightened parents seeking safety.

Sit with that.

If the Holy Family arrived at the United States border today, how would we treat them?

Would we welcome them?

Would we believe their story?

Would we recognize the sacredness of the child in Mary’s arms?

Or would we separate them, detain them, question their right to seek safety, and insist that we were only enforcing the law?

Perhaps that is what this country is truly afraid to confront.

When Jesus returns, He will not return as the carefully whitened image created to make Western Christianity comfortable.

He will not belong to our political party.

He will not salute our cruelty.

He will not recognize nationalism as faith.

He will stand among the people we rejected and ask whether we recognized Him there.

Because Jesus already told us where we would find Him:

In the hungry.

In the stranger.

In the imprisoned.

In the suffering.

In the child pushed aside by those who believed someone else mattered more.

Jesus was brown.

If we cannot recognize the face of Christ in brown children now, what makes us think we will recognize Him when He returns?

And has anyone considered that perhaps God wanted to see our fruits?

Perhaps the question was never whether we could recognize Jesus in a painting, a church, or an image our culture made comfortable for us.

Perhaps the question was whether we would recognize Him when He appeared as a frightened brown child asking for refuge.

Jesus told us:

“By their fruit you will recognize them.”
—Matthew 7:16

Not by the crosses we wear.

Not by the churches we attend.

Not by the Scriptures we quote.

Not by the political leaders we defend.

By our fruits.

What has our faith produced?

Has it produced compassion or cruelty?

Welcome or rejection?

Protection or cages?

Truth or carefully constructed excuses?

When frightened children stood before us, did our faith move us to shelter them—or did it teach us how to justify their suffering?

Perhaps God does not need these moments to discover who we are.

Perhaps these moments reveal who we are to ourselves.

Maybe this is the test.

Maybe the children at our border are not interruptions to the story of American Christianity.

Maybe they are standing at the very center of it.

God is watching the fruit we bear.

What will Heaven find growing here?

I have always had a strong sense of smell.

And I smell something rotten.

With fierce love for every child,
Rev. Sheri

Help Protect a Child

If this reflection moved you, please consider supporting an organization providing qualified legal representation and compassionate assistance to immigrant children. Children should never have to face our legal system alone.

Sources and Further Reading

Signs of Hope We Almost MissedBridge of Light Guidance: How Do I Protect My Peace Without Looking Away?