Toward the Edges
Will You Come and Follow Me?
by Lori Wilson
A note before you read: This reflection was written for a peace prayer service in the spring of 2026, during active U.S. and Israeli military conflict with Iran. By the time you are reading this, the specific circumstances may have shifted — a ceasefire may be holding, or the situation may have changed in ways none of us could predict. But the question at the heart of this piece has not changed. And neither has the summons. I draw on the hymn The Summons by John Bell.
We just sang a question. Will you come and follow me?
It sounds beautiful in the singing. But the summons Jesus issues is not to a comfortable place. He calls us to follow him — and when we look at where Jesus actually went, we see someone who moved toward the edges. Toward the sick, the excluded, the foreigner, the imprisoned. A Jesus who said blessed are the peacemakers and love your enemies and meant it.
This is the Jesus I am trying to follow. The nonviolent one. The one who, when the soldiers came for him, said put down your sword.
And yet — we are living in a world that has not gotten that memo.
In the spring of 2026, the United States entered into active military conflict with Iran. And in the midst of that conflict, our Secretary of Defense stood at a Pentagon podium and closed a press briefing by quoting Psalm 144 — Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war — as a kind of blessing over the fighting. Reports also emerged that some military commanders may have framed this conflict in terms of biblical prophecy, though those claims have not been fully verified. They were, however, alarming enough that members of Congress called for an official investigation.
I need to say this plainly: using God's name to justify killing is wrong. It has always been wrong. And it does not become less wrong because the person invoking God's name believes it sincerely.
The God I know in Jesus is not a God who anoints bombers. The God I know weeps over Iran as well as Jerusalem. The God I know says blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the most intense days of strikes. When we drape a flag of divine sanction over violence, we are not honoring God. We are using God. And that should disturb every person of faith.
The reason we work for a more just and peaceful world is not because God is on our side. It is because every single person on this earth, Iranian, Israeli, American, refugee, prisoner, immigrant, Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, bears the image of God. That is the ground of everything. Human dignity. Not nationalism. Not prophecy weaponized for geopolitics. The irreducible, God-given worth of every human person.
And that brings me to the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph, with a newborn child, fleeing in the middle of the night, refugees running from a government that wanted to kill their son. They crossed a border into Egypt. I don't think anyone stopped them and asked for papers. I don't think they were put in a detention facility to be deported. They found a haven; they were received in some way. They survived. And in that child's survival, the world was changed.
What does it mean to be a people who receive? What does it mean to follow a Jesus who himself knew what it was to be displaced, and who grew up to say I was a stranger and you welcomed me?
Here is my conundrum, and maybe it is yours too. I want to hold each person I encounter, no matter where they stand, as a child of God. I genuinely believe that. And yet I also need to speak truth, that policies which separate families, that violence dressed up as holy war, that unchecked greed which grinds the poor, these things cause real suffering to real people made in the image of God. Naming that is not partisanship. It is not politics. It is discipleship.
So how do we do this without losing each other? I think it starts here, in prayer, in letting God disturb our comfort before we try to disturb anyone else's. It starts with examining our own complicity. And then it moves outward, into hard conversations, with people we might rather write off, looking for the common ground of shared humanity where something new might be born.
The summons is real. Will you come and follow me?
I'm still learning what that yes costs. But I am grateful to be learning it in community, with you, and with the One who never stops calling us by name.
For Reflection
When you hear the hymn's question, Will you come and follow me?, what stirs in you? Is it invitation, resistance, longing, or fear? Sit with whatever arises without rushing to answer.
Where do you find yourself most tempted to use God's name to justify something, in your own life, your own choices, your own community? Not just in the headlines, but close to home.
The Holy Family were refugees. Who in your world right now is fleeing, displaced, or in need of welcome? What does it cost you to receive them — and what might it cost you not to?
Where are you being asked to speak truth and remain in a relationship at the same time? What would it look like to hold both — not perfectly, but faithfully?
A Closing Prayer
God of every nation and every name,
We come before you knowing we do not always follow where you lead. We are drawn to comfort. We are drawn to our own side. We are drawn to the God who blesses what we have already decided.
Forgive us for that.
Open our eyes to the Christ who keeps moving toward the edges, toward the ones we have written off, excluded, bombed, or simply forgotten. Let us be disturbed by what disturbs you. Let us be moved by what moves you.
We pray for all who are suffering in places of conflict, for the Iranian families who have lost children, for the American families who have lost soldiers, for every person caught in a war they did not choose. Hold them all, God. You weep over all of them.
Give us the courage to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers who simply avoid the hard conversation, but peacemakers who enter it. Help us to hold the image of God in every face, even the faces we find it hardest to see.
We are still learning what it costs to say yes to you.
Teach us. Stay with us. Call us by name.
Amen.
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