Op-ed By Claire Lalanne
I am sitting in a Haitian church during service, and the lay leader asks to pray for all those who can’t attend in person. I don’t understand why she is saying this, but I continue to pray for my (own personal) sorrow.
I attended my uncle’s funeral last month in August, and the church was almost empty. At the cemetery, my other uncle tells me how people are being arrested on Sunday mornings during service. I am speechless.
My cousin calls me to tell me that his father’s church is almost closing because of all the fear and terror!
I am in anguish… realizing what is happening. My people and community, who accidentally voted for the President during his first election when he arrived in Little Haiti personally asking for their vote, have now been lied to and bamboozled! We are now being targeted, because of TPS that made many of us refugees in the U.S. after the catastrophic earthquake in our beloved motherland, Haiti circa 2010, where approximately 300,000 Haitians died and our country has never completely recovered.
I am full of grief and mourning. I am scared to now go to a Haitian church and worship my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in a public forum, despite the fact and legal truth that I am a citizen and have lived in America since I was almost 2 years old. I don’t know how or why; yet I believe with all that I am… that Jesus Christ, my God, will redeem us from this new regime!
History of Hymns: ‘We Are the Church’ by Richard K. Avery and Donald S. Marsh The United Methodist Hymnal, 558
Refrain: I am the church! You are the church!
We are the church together! All who follow Jesus, all around the world! Yes, we’re the church together!
Stanza 1: The church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, The church is a people.*
*© 1972 Hope Publishing Company, Carol Stream, IL 60188. Used by permission. All rights reserved.