Sabbath Devotional: All are Safely Gathered In

My sister had a baby last week. He has ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, a functioning liver, lungs, kidneys, veins, everything. It’s a miracle, because he was born two months early. Failure to thrive. He weighs two pounds, two ounces. In the videos, my sister’s hand engulfs him, his legs observably smaller than her fingers. His eyes sit huge in his face. His skin bunches around sinews and bones entirely devoid of baby fat.

When she had the baby, I was two thousand miles away in New York City. We’re making a new documentary here. It’s about democracy, and about people coming together after something very hard and terrible and unexpected happened and working towards the common good. Towards healing. It’s an important project, I think. At least, it’s a message I sincerely believe in. So, I’m grateful to be here, honored we have the opportunity to try and tell this story well. 

And, I have felt real sorrow at not being nearer to my sister. I want to be helpful. But help is a difficult thing to offer in any meaningful way across a continent. I’ve done my best. I’ve called. I’ve ordered food. I’ve listened to my sister weep over her broken body, and the hour-long commute she will soon be taking every day for the entire duration of her maternity leave just to see and hold her child. And it all feels a little insufficient.

It’s had me thinking of Jochebed, a good mother who could do so little to save her boy. She bundled him, kissed his fingers and toes, and sobbed as she whispered prayer that the child might know someday how desperately she wanted to be with him. Then she placed the basket in the Nile and sent him off into a world that betrayed precious little evidence of joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And she hoped that the world would be kind, anyway. At some point, I think we all find ourselves sending our loves out the door into a chaotic and fearful world, hoping against hope that someone will find them there, snagged against the reeds, and choose compassion.

Remarkably for Jochebed, it worked. And it works still, over and over again. Not every time. Far from every time. But often enough to call it astonishing, I have seen faceless villagers from unknown tribes respond to need. Even when it is inconvenient, even when it is not their problem or their family. Even when they are situated in communities beset with division and disagreement, polarization and polemic discourse. Even when they are caught up in those tidal waves themselves. Even when people are more privileged, or less privileged. Even when people can barely take care of their own lives, people take care of other people.

I have heard that ours is a church where we call one another brother and sister and try to make it so. Over the last week, my sister’s community has called her sister. They have provided meals and childcare and housekeeping. They have visited her in the hospital, held my sister’s hands, invoked blessings on her home and family. They have been there when I have not. And they have responded simply because they were there.

I have also heard that community is declining across the country. Social bonds are increasingly fragile and breaking under the strain of massive differences. I believe it, but I believe this too: that the task of Zion is bringing everyone in from the thrushes and reeds of their lives and calling them brother, sister. That God’s work is not complete until all are safely gathered in. That we are, in actuality, divinely ordained to this holy task. That we are doing it already with every casserole left anonymously at the back door on a lonely Tuesday night.

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Sarah Perkins is the peaceful root director at Mormon Women for Ethical Government.