Justice Like a River

April 2025: A letter for Christian citizens of the U.S. right now.

Apr 18, 2025

Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,

There are days when I can’t tell whether the soft, quiet breeze through the grass in my yard is more real, or the news on my phone. Both, obviously, both—but they seem unwilling to coexist.

Last month, I confidently stated that I was not going to publish a letter this April. I had been sick. I was (am) busy and tired.

But this is important to me, so here we are. Recently, I’ve been looking at the Psalms in my oldest Bible, the Precious Moments NKJV I’ve had all my life, the one that needs repair where the glue is failing in the epistles. I left it open to the Psalms, on a page where I wanted to read something again.

Unrelated, Ezekiel 22:30 had come up in church in a sermon about intercession, and I wanted to look at the verse and its context in my Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible, a more literal translation that uses emphasis marks and word order to try to more precisely translate the original writing.

I tend to leave Bibles open so I can revisit a passage until I feel “done” with it. This led to me noticing a theme on both open pages. Here’s Psalm 146:8-9 (ESV):

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“The LORD sets the prisoners free;
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
the LORD loves the righteous.
The LORD watches over the sojourners;
he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”

And here’s Ezekiel 22:7 & 29 (ESV):

“Father and mother are treated with contempt in you; the sojourner suffers extortion in your midst; the fatherless and the widow are wronged in you.”
“The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery. They have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the sojourner without justice.”

I see here that God cares for the poor, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, and the sojourner/stranger (or the politically loaded word: immigrant). These groups come up repeatedly in Scripture (see also Exodus 22:21-24, Deuteronomy 14:29, Jeremiah 7:5-7, Zechariah 7:9-10, Malachi 3:5, for starters).

Beyond that, the combination of these passages tells me God will do justice, as this is His character, and we are offered the choice to partner with Him or, like Jerusalem in Ezekiel’s prophecy, to oppose Him.

He gives us space to oppose Him, yet those who choose to don’t usually enjoy the results for long (see, again, Malachi 3:5).

For me, I want to be where God is, doing what the Father is doing, like Jesus. If He sets free certain prisoners, watches over the foreigner, and upholds the cause of the oppressed, let me participate in what He is doing.

“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”
– Deuteronomy 10:17-19 (ESV)

And we, His people, are, in a sense, foreigners and sojourners on this earth.

Things are happening in this country that I believe are opposed to what God says is His heart for us, and I choose not to simply look away.

This is a strange time when it comes to clear communication. Many seem to want everything to fit into two boxes magnetized to the far poles of our current political spectrum.

Pages with excerpts from Psalm 146 (NKJV) and Ezekiel 22 (Rotherham). Photos by me.

I am not saying that illegal immigration and gang activity don’t matter. I am saying that due process is a requirement to prove whether someone violated a law. I am saying that sentencing should be fitting and just, not cruel nor unusual. And I am saying that errors in justice should immediately be corrected.

I have no political power beyond my vote and the “pen”. With the latter, I have rarely messaged politicians, and rarely used my little platform as a writer for political causes. But maybe I should use my words for good, much more often.

Surely, we should use whatever we have, what we are given, what we are called to, to “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24).

This letter is “in my lane”; this particular situation fits more than one of my usual letter topics, including communication, and the fact that human persons carry the Imago Dei, the Image of God, which is still carried by all the unjustly deported or otherwise illegally sentenced humans, who are not being treated according to that reality.

In a system with punishment without a trial, anyone can be accused of anything and sent anywhere on a person’s word. Maybe some of the humans who were deported without due process should have been deported, eventually (arguably, still not to CECOT, which is a related but different conversation). But until each accused person has been through the appropriate legal processes, the only relevant fact is that they were sentenced without a hearing. And as we know from history (even Jesus, on this Good Friday), to be accused is not always to be guilty.

All people have the right to due process in the United States; it’s how we appropriately assess whether accusations against a person are true or false. Otherwise, you can equally be accused, deported, and never returned—due process is the process by which any of us would be able to prove citizenship, after all.

Fight and pray for justice, and mercy, and truth—including the application of due process of law, per the Constitution of the United States, for all human persons.

Today, Good Friday, we remember the crucifixion of Jesus, the only perfect and blameless human (fully Man, and fully God). He died to save each of us when we could never deserve it.

Keep Good Friday in mind when you are tempted to declare that this or that person “deserved” a punishment like this for missing a document, for being late with their visa, or even for truly dangerous choices. What do you and I deserve? Do we want that? I don’t. Hear me: I believe in legal justice; I think the government has the right to make judicial choices to hold people responsible for their crimes, and that, as individuals, we don’t get to take that into our own hands.

Part of that belief system is, once again, due process of law. I would want due process of law for myself and my loved ones; I will therefore argue for it to apply to everyone else. Let legal courts fairly and accurately find a person guilty by law before choosing a sentence, and let the sentence be appropriate.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
– Matthew 7:12 (ESV, emphasis added)

I implore you to use your power, however small it feels, to insist that this precious, now seemingly fragile, famously free country follow its own laws, including due process for all.

Call for legal justice, not what is currently happening here.

Letters from Rae Botsford End

Justice Like a River

April 2025: A letter for Christian citizens of the U.S. right now.

Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,

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