By Grayson Hester

If Venezuela makes international headlines, it’s rarely for good news. The current iteration of the South American country’s long-roiling political troubles finds incumbent president Nicolás Maduro claiming victory, mere weeks ago, in an election he demonstrably and overwhelmingly lost.

Yet, Maduro clings to power all the same. And many of the country’s people, once again, protest in the streets, valuing more highly their fight for survival than their fear of reprisal.

Others just leave. So untenable they find the situation, so faint the hope of living, that their only viable option is to seek life elsewhere. And in so doing, they join the nearly eight million other Venezuelans who live abroad, amounting roughly to a quarter of the country’s total population. Gabriel is one of those eight million.

Not all Venezuelan migrants flee to the United States; Gabriel, however, braved the seven-country journey through jungle and river and xenophobia and grief to make it to the border with Texas.

It’s a stark choice. Either you risk death on the path to something unfamiliar or you all but guarantee it in the mire of what you’ve always known. Gabriel chose the risk.

“The situation with the government was fatal,” Gabriel said. “The education opportunity was terrible, and the jobs did not pay well—a salary was $20 a month.”

Gabriel began his journey in January; at that time, one U.S. dollar equaled about 36 Venezuelan bolivar. That meant for him, his wife, and his two sons, he made 720 bolivars monthly, a paltry sum reflective of more than a decade of government mismanagement and economic stagnation.

Pairing that with political repression, persecutions and escalating imprisonments, life for Gabriel and his family had not only become unworkable—it had become mortally unsafe.

“If I had enough to eat, my children didn’t have enough to eat. I did not have enough for my children,” he said.

So, Gabriel and a dear cousin and childhood friend decided to leave. They set out on a well-trod and infamously lethal path through Colombia to the U.S.-Mexico border, motivated solely by love of family and the faith that they would find something better.

It’s not a choice anyone wants to make. It’s a choice so stark as to practically be made for them, legislated by corrupt powers and enforced by fraying social contracts.

Those who choose the journey are well aware of the threats awaiting them, particularly in the Darien Gap, a stretch of infamously dangerous jungle straddling Colombia and Panama. But, when motivated by the border-breaking, world-upending love of laying down one’s life for their friends—it is a journey walked truly by faith, not by sight.

Or, as Gabriel put it: “What motivates one to emigrate to another country is simply his children, his family, to look for something better for them.”

This love casts out fear. In the face of scheming traffickers and rushing rivers, brutal natural conditions and bigoted social conditioning, love for family is the only response that keeps Gabriel and millions of others like him going. Otherwise, the fear would be too much.

But that is not to say it is easy. Far from it. Even though Gabriel and his companions did eventually make it to Brownsville, Texas, after months of agonizing travel, this milestone represented not so much an end to their hardship, but the beginning of a gruesome new permutation.

Not long after entering the United States—after circumnavigating seven borders and thousands of miles and untold obstacles—a driver crashed into a crowd of people seeking shelter, killing Gabriel’s childhood friend. And not only did Gabriel lose a beloved friend—he lost one of his legs.

This was how the country symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, mythologized by the American Dream, in this case welcomed these “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Nearly immediately upon Gabriel’s entering, this nation, with so much to give, took nearly everything.

This irony, even months later, is not lost on Gabriel. “There are days when it hits me because this is not what I wanted,” he said.

But, as has so often been the case throughout history, where the nations stumble, the Kingdom of Heaven steps in. Despite having been abandoned at home and assaulted abroad, Gabriel and his cousin were not, in the end, alone.

Elket Rodríguez is a legal advocate for migrant populations along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas and a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel. He knows the stories of immigrants. Once he and Gabriel found each other, he went about the work of connecting Gabriel to the resources he needed to reunite with his family.

One such resource, perhaps the most inexhaustible of all, was accompaniment.

“I think he’s understanding that this terrible incident is an opportunity that God is giving him to share strength and hope with others,” Rodríguez said.

Rodríguez did not mention this to dismiss the very real trauma Gabriel underwent and the continuing isolation and displacement he feels in a brand-new, and oftentimes inhospitable, land. But, instead, to recognize Gabriel’s resiliency, hope, faith and quest for meaning amidst his grief, confusion and suffering.

Gabriel’s journey underscores what Jesus himself and all the itinerant followers who came after him have long known: The meat of the Gospel, the very substance of salvation, is the redemption of state-sanctioned violence. It is the refusal to give the powers and principalities the final say. It is the stubborn hope in—and the otherworldly wherewithal to create something better.

And with the help of Rodríguez, CBF, Fellowship Southwest, Catholic Charities, Texas Civil Rights Project and networks of migrant-focused organizations, something better is coming into view. That redemption is slowly being made manifest.

“Gabriel continues to face his fears and continues to put his faith in God, even when at some point in his life he thought he had lost everything,” Rodríguez said.

Gabriel’s faith was not unfounded, and it did not go without reward. Not long ago, his wife and two sons were able—aided by Rodríguez and CBF—to relocate to the United States and start a new life together. Far from erasing what Gabriel went through, it substantiates the fierceness of his faith and the inexhaustibility of his love.

“God never abandoned me at that moment, in that tragedy. Even when I felt I was going to die, God was always there with me,” he said. “If I trust in God, I know that many blessings will come to me.”

Right now, at this beautiful stage of his journey, the blessings look like a family reunited, a vision of a hoped-for future and a life reignited. It looks like, in short, the Kingdom of Heaven, which belongs to those persecuted solely for the rightness of loving their families and their futures. God stands on their side, promising them life and life abundant.

It is a promise Gabriel is uniquely well- positioned to receive. “I want to prosper for my children, to give them a better future.”