Dear Friends,
I write from my desk, warming my fingers, on our first snowy December day. We’re all thrilled as the snow accumulates. You see, this didn’t happen last year, so we’re making up for the missed snowball fights and snow angels.
One of the boys from the Day Center said to me, “This is too early for snow. We aren’t really in winter yet. That happens after Christmas.” And I feel like my grandfather telling me that he used to buy coke for a nickel when I tell him how it used to snow in November. Climate change – a signpost that now marks our age.
The snow also adds to the mood as we get ready for Christmas. We are decorating the tree, preparing a Christmas program for the children’s families, and planning our all night Christmas party. Today we had 70 children from a local school come to the Center. These are children that don’t receive a lot for Christmas. Our kids led them in some Christmas carols, Lenutsa told them the Christmas story, and then we handed out a Christmas gift to each child. Although it was a bit chaotic with 70 extra kids, teachers and parents, our hope and prayer is that each would sense God’s care and love in the small gift.
In the midst of the joy of the season, we continue to suffer from the wounds of a world that have not received the King.
Novemer 25th is the international day against domestic violence. Ironically, on that day one of our boys came to the Center bruised by his father’s beating him with an ax handle.
Although it has been warm, the temperatures are dropping this week into the single digits. And just this week the stove of one of our families, on which they both cook and heat their room, broke.
And we have been hearing over the past few weeks how the economic crisis is now being felt in Romania as money is blocked up and businesses can’t get loans to pay their employees.
It is in this environment that we eagerly await the coming of the Messiah. I think of God asking Mary to receive the Messiah, to become pregnant, and to birth the Child. God was not Self-imposing. Mary could have refused. There was a chance that the child would be rejected before the cross and before the parents looked for an inn. But she received Him.
I think of Joseph. It wasn’t his child that he was asked to father.. He had no obligations. In the midst of confusion and distrust and certainly in the midst of pain and dashed hopes, he chose to receive the Son as his own.
Recently, I learned that all of the state orphanages in Galati are full again. Although the government has praised itself for reducing the number of children in the orphanages, the reality is different. There is no more room.
Sometimes I hear the voice of God calling me to open up to the rejected and abandoned. I hear God’s voice saying, “Receive them and you receive me.” But the numbers of needy children are overwhelming. Yet, I take comfort in the story of Joseph and Mary. They weren’t asked to save the world. They weren’t asked to parent hundreds of children. They were asked to receive One. As God brings the one in front of me, I am asked to respond. It may be one that has been abused at home, who needs some comfort. It may be the one who is too cold to stay at home is invited over for a hot meal. Or it may be the children left in orphanages with whom we build relationships and try to find loving families. God is faithful in bringing “one” before us through whom we can receive and love God. In the midst of a wounded world, we call out for joy, “Let earth receive her King.”
With prayers for a wonderful Christmas and New Year,
david and lenutsa