As we boarded our flight out of Singapore, soft music was flowing through the plane’s loudspeakers. A smile came immediately to Pris’ face. She recognized the significance of what we were hearing. Christmas music on a plane in mid-November was an unmistakable and welcome sign to my wife. We were on a Philippines airline traveling to the Philippines, and she was excited! Soon we would be back in the country we had called home three decades before, a country surprisingly eager for Christmas, where jingle bells, decorations and “O Little of Bethlehem” begin as early as September.
Today, after some marvelously blessed visits with friends and other fellow believers, we leave the Philippines on our way back home to Minneapolis. After six weeks of visiting WMPL workers and partners throughout Asia, we’ll soon arrive in the crisp and snowy cold of Minnesota, just in time to celebrate Advent and Christmas. Our experiences and conversations in Asia will remain with us through that season and well beyond. The chorus of the angels appearing in the night sky above Bethlehem will inspire prayer for a part of the earth where many so desperately need “peace and good will toward men.”
Sadly, the life-giving truth of Christmas – that God sent his Son to bring peace and grace, and to save us all – remains hidden from the lives and ears and souls of so very many of the people whose cities and countries we visited on this journey. Peace, it would seem, is a fleeting commodity. Just the day after we departed Pakistan, violence broke out in protest of a Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy. Here in the Philippines, parts of the southern island of Mindanao remain off-limits to foreigners. The world needs the peace of the One born in Bethlehem.
I find myself wondering how that peace makes its way through the flash and clamor of our increasingly commercialized Christmas celebrations in North America. “Where’s Jesus?” we may ask. Even in the Philippines, where we once would see elaborate nativity scenes widely displayed, the crowded shopping malls are brilliantly decorated, but without even a hint of the Savior born King of the Jews and Prince of Peace. Is Jesus hidden here, too?
In truth, Jesus was pretty well hidden on that first Christmas, too. Only a very few were witnesses to his coming. It happened in the dark of night in a small and forgotten Palestinian town. The hustle and bustle of a nation-wide census in an occupied land was demanding everyone’s attention. Who would even hear the cries of a baby born in a barn because his parents had been denied a hotel room?
The birth, as we know, was announced to an interesting and unsuspecting audience. The shepherds would be the ones to hear the Good News. They would be privileged to see the Savior! And they would be compelled to tell others of what they had experienced! (Luke 2:8-17) Into a dark, confused and violent world, God sent his Son. He also placed messengers there who would share this amazing news.
It is through those shepherds and generations of other messengers that God has made the Good News of Christmas known to us! Things haven’t really changed much in that regard. Much of the world remains dark, confused and violent. Individuals and families and communities experience the same in North America. The Savior still comes with peace and grace and forgiveness for all, but his presence may remain hidden to many people, and even most people in some places. Those people need the peace of the Savior, but they also need messengers.
I pray you will hear the Good News this Christmas! If you do, then be like the shepherds! With whom does God want you to share the news of a Savior? I encourage you to pray on that – and please pray also for our workers who are the “shepherds” in some of those dark, confused and violent corners of the world, and for those who might want to know more from them about this curious thing we call “Christmas.”