Do not oppress a foreigner. You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners. Exodus

23, verse 9. Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading titled

Loving the Stranger was written by Patricia Ray Rabon and read by Joyce Dinkins.

Leviticus chapter 19, verses 9 through 10 and 33 through 34.

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.

Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen.

Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.

I am the Lord, your God. Now picking up at verse 33, when a foreigner resides among you

in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native born.

Love them as yourself.

For you were foreigners in Egypt.

I am the Lord, your God.

Loving the Stranger, written by Patricia Raban.

A friend's wife, a master seamstress, made a loving plan before she passed away from a long illness. She donated all her sewing equipment to our town's sewing guild, providing

sewing machines, cutting tables, and more for classes teaching newly arrived immigrants.

I counted 28 boxes of fabric alone, her husband told us.

Six women came by to pick up everything.

Their students are hard workers, eager to learn a skill.

Others describe such newcomers in less flattering ways.

The plight of immigrants has become a divisive issue. Moses, however, issued God's view in Exodus

23, saying, do not oppress a foreigner. You yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners.

He further shared God's decree regarding foreigners in Leviticus chapter 19. When you reap the harvest of

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