Last night our church was host to Abby Williams,the co-founder and director of Lantern Hill (http://www.lanternhillmx.org/index.html), a non-profit mission community outside of Ensenada, Mexico.  Lantern Hill’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty through education, and, as their tag line states, their “Change One Thing” mentality.  Our global mission partner this year, a small group from our church went down to Lantern Hill for a trip this last summer.  We didn’t go on this trip, and I’m not exactly here to discuss their operation, worthy as it is.  But two things struck me during the service last evening, and how those comments directly relate to a LOT of the issues currently facing all of us.

Mrs. Williams spoke of a time when, during a crafting time with the younger children of the missions, they posed the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  She asked the same question at church last night, with some typical USA youth answers — a movie director, a police officer, a couple of astronauts.  But when she had asked that same question to a group of elementary age youth at their mission, she was not met with a host of answers.  In fact, she wasn’t met with a SINGLE answer.  Nothing but blank stares.

A young teenage man from church who had gone on the trip referenced a quote that has multiple contexts, but was particularly true in today’s world, and in relation to Mrs. Williams story above. The young man was struck by the differences between his world here in Fargo, North Dakota, and the world of poverty and need outside of Ensenada.  As he said in front of the church, those young kids in Mexico, if they had been born just 10 miles away actually INSIDE Ensenada, would have had a much different life.  If they had been more just 100 miles away, over the border in the United States, their lives might have been incalculably better.  Except that, for an accident of geography, they where born where they were born, a small agricultural town in the Baja.

Those kids could have been born here, and had a world of opportunity at their feet.  We could have just as easily been born in Mexico, or Syria, or North Korea.  Closer to home, your or I could have been born to parents living on the street.  To a poor single mother living near the edge of ruin.  To a drug addict.  Or maybe simply to someone who couldn’t afford to send you to college. You could have easily been of African, Asian, Native American or Middle Eastern decent, and face all their challenges.

When asked what you want to be when you grew up, what if the only future you could think of was working in the fields, picking tomatoes?  Just like your parents, and grandparents.  What if the only way to picture a better future was to flee your war torn country, and hope the kindness of others would support you on the journey?

But only for an accident of geography do we have what we have.   Should we turn our backs on all of those who were born elsewhere?