About 3 years before we met, they had left Baghdad and fled to Jordan, where they underwent the long, arduous process of being classified as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), and after two years of screening processes and background checks, they were finally cleared to come to the US. They began working and starting a new life here, and they have been contributing to the building up of our country since.

       Last month, The Rev. Laurie Brock, Rector of St. Michael's, Lexington, and I were invited by Church World Service along with 30 other faith leaders from across the country to share with our elected representatives in Washington, D.C. how we can model Matthew 25 and treat those who have been forced from their countries as Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were, and welcome them into our country. This nation-wide group of clergy gathered for a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol where we shared our hope that the U.S. will welcome an average number (75,000) of refugees in 2018, as the current administration is proposing to allow the lowest number (45,000) since the beginning of the refugee resettlement program since its inception with congress in the early 1980s (the lowest number ever was 65,000)**. We also affirmed that we meet Jesus in the face of not only refugees, but in the face of young people who were brought to this country by their parents who were escaping challenging economic situations in their own countries years ago. These young people, who had no control over their being brought to the U.S. as young children, are known as DACA recipients (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), and the clergy washed the feet of a few DACA recipients as a part of this event to show how we respected them and valued their presence here with us. We appealed to our governmental leaders to please provide a legal way for these young people to continue to stay in the U.S. after the announcement that the DACA program was coming to an end, and we asked that, through funding, that all people in this country, regardless of their documentation status, be treated with dignity and respect. Each of us also met with our elected leaders from our individual states to share the positive impact of immigrants and refugees in our communities. We shared the stories of Ibrahim and Noora, and of Syrian refugees resettled by St. Michael's, Lexington.

       It was a powerful day, and it was one that helped me to remember that when we look on the face of another-regardless of whether they have arrived here from Central America at the age of four,

or if they arrived here from war-torn Syria, or the famine-stricken Sudan last year, we are looking on the face of Christ.