Borders, Passports and Visas

In the United States, we don't think much about borders. The US is as large as the British Isles, Europe, Scandinavia and a large part of Russia, without borders.

In the rest of the world, passports are part of every day life. "Sin Pasaporte, no te vas!"

I sat in the US embassy in Quito with Mincaye, years ago, trying to get him a passport so he could visit my family in Florida. There were 50 to 75 people ahead of us, waiting. I realized that some of those people had been trying to get a visa to the US for years. I began to really appreciate my "Blue" passport that day.

Why can I come and go to the US of A as I please and sweet old Mincaye and six billion seven hundred million other people can't? Why do I merit the most sought after citizenship on planet earth while thousands of millions of other people, who would give everything they have for it, don't?

Why? Because I'm a nice guy, and I speak English, and because I grew up eating hamburgers instead of smoked monkey and manioc like Mincaye did? No! My US citizenship has nothing to do with me or anything I have done. It was a free gift, unmerited.

When Mincaye and I went up to the bullet proof glass cubicle for his interview with the US Consul that day, I had butterflies in my stomach. Mincaye had no profession, he had no bank account, he speaks only his tribal language and he had never been outside of Ecuador. Mincaye didn't even begin to meet the basic visa qualifications. But, the consul had read my Dad's biography. When he realized that the man who helped kill my Dad, had become family and that we wanted him to see our son Jesse graduate from high school, he extended grace to Mincaye and me and gave us a visa we didn't deserve. If he hadn't, End of the Spear, Beyond the Gates of Splendor and the new film, Grandfathers, never would have been made and I would probably not have written End of the Spear (the book) or Walking His Trail or The Great Omission.

The Bible says that we are "Ambassadors for Christ..." in 2 Corinthians 5:20. We are heaven's INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service). We have the information necessary to fill out the visa form that will guarantee entry to God's paradise for ever, "saved by grace..." (Ephesians 2:8-9). Let's take that stewardship responsibility seriously. People's lives depend on it!

The article was originally published in the April 2012 ITEC Newsletter.