Game of Trumps

Some of us in this family enjoy playing the game of Wizard. It’s a game of trumps, which I rarely win but I enjoy. When we sailed to New York on the Queen Mary 2 last year, I took a daily morning lesson in how to play bridge, another game of trumps. I didn’t begin to really understand what I was doing and would never be on a winning team without many more lessons, but again, I enjoyed the challenge of the game.

It seems there is a game of trumps being played out in the US now, which I don’t understand and don’t like. It’s a game in which everyone is a loser. The obvious losers are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. They are the weak and the destitute, the orphan and the widow, the old and the dispossessed. They are the stateless victims arriving at the southern border, exhausted and fearful, desperate to find a safe haven for themselves and their children.

They arrive to find they have been trumped, and the penalty is separation, incarceration, and possible deportation. If Mary and Joseph had arrived in El Paso with new-born baby Jesus, they’d have been separated and incarcerated. Egypt has a bad rep in the Bible, but they had no such cruel policy. Mary and Joseph stayed a few years and then, when the death of a tyrant meant it was safe to go home, that’s what they did. They left Egypt and went home to Nazareth. Egypt, the cruel nation from which Moses and millions of enslaved Hebrews were set free, had been a safe haven to refugees fleeing persecution. I am sure God blessed many Egyptians for their kindness and compassion to a young, frightened family.

The other losers in this game of trumps is the culture and value system of this former Christian country. Some members of Team Trump claim that the Bible validates the plan to separate families, and call on patriotic Americans to obey the administration as they freewheel their way through the law of the land in their desperate quest to ‘make America great again’.

Where is Jesus in all this? High-fiving his way around the White House, encouraging the executive to continue being tough on these murderers and rapists who are swamping the border and threatening the security of all Americans? No. He will be found in the compassionate hearts and outstretched hands of those seeking to comfort the victims. He will be moving among the crying children, confused and heart-broken in an alien culture, where they don’t even speak the language. He will be sitting with sobbing fathers and mothers, robbed of their children by those from whom they sought asylum.

America is on a downward spiral, which will only be corrected if her leaders live out the motto on the money: in God we trust. With open hearts and open arms, it’s time for America’s leaders to live big and brave, not small and scared.

Last year I was so moved to sail into New York harbour as my forbears had, guided in by the torch held high by Statue of Liberty. They were on a ship from Hamburg, and they built a new life for themselves in the American heartland.

So what’s happened to America’s heart? How has it all gone so wrong?

Maybe we all started caring more about ‘me’ than about ‘we’. Maybe we became vulnerable to fear as our faith ebbed. As our security became rooted in our bank accounts and pensions and insurance policies, maybe a frisson of fear trembled our hearts as we turned up the music, not wanting to be reminded of the fragility of our own lives. We didn’t arrive here overnight, though the arrival seems sudden.

Well now we’ve been trumped, by a president who regularly identifies others as losers, without recognising that he, like all of us who listen more to our own wisdom than to God’s, are losers. Without Jesus as our guide, we are all losers.

I am so grateful that in this big game of life, God makes the rules, and they are all grounded in love. Jesus, the way, the truth, the life, the Prince of Peace, is the trump card. Because he loved us so much to die for us all, (yes, even the ‘losers’), we can live big and brave and bold, motivated by love and compassion.

I am so grateful to God, that love trumps everything.