I LOVE Broadway musicals. When all of my friends were listening to Britney Spears, I was belting it out to Barbra Streisand. Of course, I saw In the Heights with my best musical-loving friend the first week it came out. For those of you not familiar with the musical, the story focuses around Usnavi, a Dominican immigrant who runs a small bodega in the rapidly-changing Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. While I wish I had time to flesh out all of the amazing characters and sub-stories, I’ll have to focus on just one. Abuela is the matriarch of the community, the glue who holds everyone together. She is a Cuban immigrant who came to New York with her mother in 1943 to find work and escape the increasingly dangerous streets of Havana. Her song “Paciencia y Fe” tells a heart-wrenching story that I’m sure is all too familiar to any immigrant: leaving your homeland for the hope of something better, even if it might not be there.
Abuela and her mother leave Cuba and are immediately thrust into the bustling metropolis of New York City. They struggle to find their place within this new world. Back at home, they may not have had much. But at least they had community. In New York City, they have no place to live and no means of income. They don’t even speak the language. The only thing they have is paciencia y fe, patience and faith. They have the patience that things will get better and the faith that God will see them through and provide for them.
Sometimes it feels like patience and faith are not enough, and you need an earthly support system in addition to the heavenly. That’s where we Christians come in.
We all come from immigrants. Each one of us has a history of being strangers in a strange land, whether it was 50 years or 500 years ago. I want you to travel back in time and put yourself in the shoes of your ancestor. Imagine leaving all you know behind and being thrown into a new culture where you know no one, can’t get a job, do not speak the language, and are all alone. As you imagine this scenario, remember that God’s instructions to us: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”