Tag: Samuel Oliver Bruno

Remembering Samuel

I took this photo on Sunday. I often sit right behind Samuel’s chair, right where I often sat when he was still in sanctuary in our church building. We miss him every Sunday and still wonder what value our country got out of the taxpayer dollars ICE spent in its action to entrap, arrest, and deport him. We experience every day the damage that was done.

Over the past month I’ve been putting together this video for Samuel, using a photo published the day we surrounded the ICE van, a graphic produced shortly afterward as we fought against his deportation, and an arrangement of Amazing Grace I often play at a nearby cancer center. I offer it here as an encouragement to Samuel (who recently celebrated a birthday) and also to all of us who miss him. It’s just over a minute long and has audio – please take a look (and listen).

If you’d like to find out more about Samuel, check out my original post and also this page that lists ways people can support him and his family.

Grace and peace to you…

Tags Amazing Grace, deportation, ICE, immigration, Samuel Oliver Bruno

Poetry

Immigration status (re-post)

Post author By dw
Post date December 16, 2018
1 Comment on Immigration status (re-post)

We would be,
all of us,
detained at heaven’s border,
seeking life,
fleeing death,
illegal immigrants all;

Detained and
forever separated
from our loved ones;

Were it not
for God’s outrageous mercy,
his willingness to spend
without limit
his very life
for us
so that we
could be
not only citizens of his realm,
but his very sons and daughters,
sharing his home,
his table,
his very life.

dw

Copyright © 2018, all rights reserved.

Samuel, we miss you and are praying for you and Julia and Daniel. We want to see your family together again; we want you to worship here with us again. God be with you.

Tags border, citizenship, detained, family, Free Samuel, God's mercy, illegal immigrant, immigration, Samuel Oliver Bruno, separation

Scripture

Disapproved

Post author By dw
Post date December 2, 2018
4 Comments on Disapproved

The Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes those we don’t approve of and eats with them.”

And Jesus told them…”I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one person you don’t approve of who repents than over ninety-nine people you approve of who need no repentance.”

Luke 15

* My paraphrase, substituting for the words ‘sinners’ and ‘righteous persons’.

We who are disapproved are prized by the One who was disapproved.

We who are approved (and thus one with the disapprovers) miss out on the joy of heaven.

Lord, have mercy on us!

p.s. My friend Samuel, one of the disapproved, is safe in Mexico with people who love him and care for him , including his son (!). God’s loving-kindness knows no borders and no bounds.