Music Monday: One of Us by Joan Osborne

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make His way home?

How soon things change. Barely three months ago the world saw a little boy in blue shorts and a red shirt, lying face down on a Turkish beach. Now after the Paris bombings it seems everyone wants to shut the door or leave it open a crack to let Syrian Christians in. Much safer goes the thinking, it’s akin the shutting the door, putting a pillow over one’s head while singling ‘la la la they can’t hurt me.’

The amount of bigotry, disguised as safety arguments, left me dumbfounded, and some of it came from people I knew on FaceBook. Good Christian folk forgot the other part of the Nativity story. While we remember the birth of Jesus, we sometimes forget Joseph, much like Abdullah Kurdi, took his wife and son and fled to Egypt. The son of God was a refugee from a leader not thinking twice about slaughtering children to keep his power.

Sound familiar? Please don’t go on with the but-it’s-different arguments. I will reply with the story of an influx of Vietnamese boat people building lives in Winnipeg, or why nobody made the same argument about people from Belfast. The latter may have immigrated, but they wanted nothing more to do with tanks and car bombs. I heard nobody say ‘Let’s not have Irish Catholics come over to North America. The IRA might attempt to blend in and carry out their plots.’

I had this song at the back of my head for a long time. I didn’t know when, or how to use it for Music Monday. I knew it had a Christmas feel to it, but I missed something. I had to remember seeing the picture of Alan Kurdi  for the first time, smiling pictures put next to his final resting place. It’s not a stable in Behlehm, but if we forget the desparation it takes to get on a dingy then forget Christmas.

God is truly dead in our hearts.