While we are celebrating Christmas… Pt 2
Assorted pictorials, carvings and sculptures depicting the baby Messiah and the humble manger scenes are decors presently adorning many places this season.
The nativity narrative, rich in mystery and meaning, continues to inspire believers from year to year, with its profound paradoxes, urging us to embrace the wonders, joys and pains weaved into the journeys of the key characters at the first Christmas.
It’s a season of joy and goodwill, demonstrated in many unique ways, from giving and receiving gifts, to entertaining guests and visiting friends and places. It’s a season when many faithfuls find good reasons to suspend healthy disciplines and indulge a little.
While many of us celebrate this Christmas and prep for the new year, it’s needful to reflect on the lives of some around us, to whom this Christmas is anything but joy and jingle bells. The first Christmas had an incredible story of pain, one that the journeying young couple probably weren’t prepared for.
I invite you here, to meet three children, whose stories underline for me, a little appreciated aspect of this festive season.
Josephine Night Sebit is two and half years old. Her parents fled with her from South Sudan early this year and are settled at Imvepi refugee camp. Safety and sustenance were their priorities. From their story, it’s clear this family has wrestled with unspeakable challenges in their quest for the soundness of health of this precious little girl. Josephine needs constant care and her mother was ever present to provide it.
Right before us that hot afternoon was a human being, made in the image of God, one upon whom the Spirit could indwell; one who like Viola, is ripe for a remarkable miracle. Dear Lord, is ANYTHING too difficult for you? We invited You few weeks ago to undertake for this family and make a name for Yourself. Lord Jesus, while we celebrate you this season, glorify Your name here, heal this child!
John Akeem Joseph is 12 and has polio. Like Viola and Josephine, his brave mother is a refugee in Imvepi Camp, with 135,000 other settlers from South Sudan. Aside the effects of polio, John can’t speak but he can hear and understand when love is flowing around him.
As I lifted John from off the floor and prayed for him, he clung so tightly and didn’t want to let go of my hand when we made moves to leave. My heart was deeply stirred for this boy and his worn-out parents, seeing and sensing the longing in his eyes and the apparent hopelessness all round. The unconditional love on display there reminded me of the essence of this season and I ask, How did John and his mother spend this Christmas? How could it have been better for them? What was their primary wish this season?
Her name is Joy and she’s two and half years old. I met her at Rhino refugee Camp in May, but I didn’t know her story then. Our next close encounter was in November when I learnt from one of the teachers at Hope Primary School that Joy’s mother fled with her from South Sudan but abandoned her in the camp and disappeared. I was shocked.
Having met other children with complicated health issues, how could the mother of this sweet, beautiful able bodied little girl abandon her to strangers? Where did she go? What was more important to her than this child? This is the story of thousands of children in various camps in northern Uganda today. They are called “Unaccompanied”. What an irony!
While we celebrate this holiday season and relish the goodness of the Lord, let’s remember those that have no clue it’s Christmas; those that new clothes, tasty meals of a different flavor, dance and songs that signals a festive season such as this, is currently far-fetched. Let’s enter their pain by choosing to live simply and plotting ways to bring lasting help and hope through our corporate efforts.
Be sure to hear more about these children and others like them from this space. The Kingdom has come and will reach these too. I invite you to be part of their journey of hope and victory.
May 2018 be a most fruitful year for you, in Jesus name!
