Psalm 133 opens on an idyllic note that carries through to the end. The family of faith that worships together ascends to heights of happiness. God’s protective favor streams over the people like soothing oil and refreshing water.

To present-day migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers surging across national borders, Psalm 133 may read like fantasy fiction. At the time of this writing, a record-setting crush of people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador is surging into the southwestern United States. They are fleeing gang violence in their homelands, domestic abuse, and the poverty that causes it all. Desperate pilgrims looking for work in construction, food service, landscaping, and housekeeping, many traveling with children, are housed for seventy-two hours in Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facilities. Then, by law, they are transferred into immigration detention facilities.

When detention centers exceed capacity, migrants are released into the care of churches equipped to shelter guests. Christians who are determined to come closer to the psalm’s imagery of kindred living together in unity assemble at their houses of worship. They inflate air mattresses, loan mobile shower units, and collect hefty sacks of frijoles rojo de seda, the ruddy little legumes (red silk beans) essential to Central American cuisine. Donated corn tortillas stack up by the dozens. Onion-studded rice steams in a stockpot, offering its savory aroma to all comers, regardless of their national origin or family name. Everyone’s hungry—visitors and volunteers alike. Everyone, deep down, is looking for home.

Governments and gang leaders may exploit human need to gain social control. But God uses our humanity to put us to the holy work of welcoming strangers and of being welcomed by people who, it turns out, are our sisters and brothers, our children, our mothers and fathers.