Please see the special note at the end of this email.
Life emerges from blood, sweat and tears; from hopes, desires and fears. Mary delivering Jesus in a strange, but warm and safe place, provides one of the most endearing images of Christmas.
I stood on the sidelines of the sweetest nativity re-enactment this past week. Our church had over a few weeks collected the furnishings to outfit an apartment in a nearby city for a family who’d been evacuated from Afghanistan. Delivery day came and we hauled the cargo to the newly rented apartment.
It would be home to three brothers and the expectant wife of one of them. A cousin worked for the US military, putting the entire extended family in the sights of the Taliban. Eleven of them are now here, but 30 remain in hiding in Afghanistan.
Sixteen hours after we dropped off the cargo, the wife graduated to mom status and welcomed the newest Afghan-American to the world.
My buds and I were the donkeys on the periphery of this nativity. And darn happy to be so.
As we celebrate Jesus’s birth in the next few days, with gusto I hope, may the Holy Spirit remind us to breathe a prayer for those navigating new lives like the holy family of long ago.
Twice a year I invite Muslim Connect readers to contribute to the success and growth of this email. If you’ve found value in Muslim Connect please consider giving a year end gift here (under “Staff” and choose “Shane Bennett”). Half of the funds that come in over the next three weeks will be passed on to help Afghans, possibly the family above, as they resettle in US. Thank you.