For King or Country?

Over recent years, the new ways I’ve experienced Jesus, community and Kingdom has caused some significant internal struggle as I experience and observe the 4^thof July. How do we hold the tension of celebrating whatever it is that you or I may find great about this country yet acknowledging that others may have and hold a very difference perspective than our own?How do we hold the tension of celebrating whatever it is that you or I may find great about this country, yet still pledging our true allegiance to Kingdom? 

What does it mean to love Jesus in this country, or any country, and to work toward his mission and his vision with unequivocal humility, unequivocal passion, and unequivocal clarity of where our hope and identity rests?

It is a tension that I have undoubtedly failed to fully reconcile and one I will continue to undoubtedly fail to fully live into well.

As Ace in the City prepares for our 11^thannual summer trip to Emmanuel Children’s Home in Juarez, Mexico, we will be crossing the El Paso border during very unique and troubling circumstances. Yet I’m reminded, as we anticipate another amazing time with our friends and family of the home, that the invitation in front of us all as Jesus followers is to love our neighbor as ourselves.

As we lean into whatever it means to “be American,” may we all lean further into what it means to be a follower of the Way. May we learn to love our neighbor better today, not as a citizen, not as someone on “the right side” of a political border, but as brothers and sisters of a much bigger family—whose Kingdom has no walls and no borders and no boundaries.