Blog 4007 – 11.14.2026

How Quickly We Forget

We were most all of us undocumented immigrants from somewhere else even the First People who had this country for a thousand years before the European “discovered” it. The last wave of immigrants are often the ones most adamantly opposed to new immigrants “coming to take our jobs and change our way of life.” Had those Massachusetts’ Bay Native Americans not saved the starving freezing Pilgrims from the old world that first winter and taught them how to survive and produce crops this wonderful experiment we call the United States of America might have died in it’s crib.

We owe our heritage to the kindness of strangers who welcomed us and made a place for us in this great land. They did not believe they owned the land, but that they were merely stewards of its wealth and bounty. We could learn a lot from that as well. 

Jesus taught his disciples that the true measure of their devotion to him is measured by how they treat the stranger (the immigrant), the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned. He said, in as much as we do or do not to these, the least of his brethren, that we do or do not to him.

Oddly enough, those first Thanksgiving Native Americans who had never heard of Jesus turned out to act more like Christians than those who proudly claim that title, but have no love for the stranger, the poor, the sick, or the imprisoned.

How quickly we forget that but for the kindness of strangers we would not have survived let alone thrived in this great country.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White