Asylum?  Across the world, nations are wrestling with the question of asylum.  How do we decide, if we even must decide, to whom we will grant asylum into our country?  It's a very complicated issue.  On the one hand, most asylum seekers have patently legitimate grounds for requesting protection.  For instance, what would you say to your child if she came home one day and told you that the local gang informed her that unless she joined tomorrow, she would be killed?  Or if you were a girl who faced genital cutting?  What if you were caught in the middle of a war, your home completely and utterly destroyed, and no end in sight?
     On the other hand come rejoinders like, "We can't help everyone," "That is their lot and we cannot change it," "They're really trying to slip in and hurt us," and a host of other, dare I say, less than fully adequate excuses.  Most Western nations are far wealthier than the rest of the world.  Surely, we can bend our arcs of justice (to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr.) to accommodate these situations.  It does not do to say that the law is just, that the law restricts us, and that therefore to deny asylum is to be just.  That's simply spinning our wheels.
     Maybe this is why the Hebrew prophets said repeatedly that God is more concerned that we make the core of justice mercy, not ritual, that we use our minds and our hearts to effect justice and not our minds only.
     Of what use is a law if it does not take into account the humanity of the heart?