With Advent starting tomorrow, Christmas lights being hung, Black Nativity choir singing today, we begin to prepare. For what? For whom? A refugee homeless teen couple gave birth to EMMANUEL in a stable.
Right now I’m walking alongside a number of young mothers and pregnant teens. One is ready ‘to pop’ as she says, one is in jail, and the youngest, 15, called me this morning worried because she was throwing up and wasn’t aware of the toil of morning sickness.
On Wednesday night, I visited ‘Tania’ in the jail, whose 3-year-old daughter is in the care of her parents. She asked me to have her mom send photos and pick her up and bring her to church. Jail, she says, is the best thing that’s happened to her. She needs to get clean, go to counseling, and mostly she wants to change for her daughter. Teen pregnancy, and its challenges, is not an abstract reality. I am freshly amazed at the circumstances of our Christ’s birth… entering our world in such fragility, vulnerability and insecurity. Amidst all the buzz of the season, may we let Christ embrace us in all of our own fragility, vulnerability, and insecurity? Redeeming and welcoming us as His children, empowered by His Spirit, and sent forth as His disciples.
I am grateful that I get to walk alongside these women, and desire to see Christ birthed in all of us anew this season.
Thank you dearly for your ongoing support!
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