A Christmas Message

A little group of us were sitting on narrow benches in a crowded little chapel at six in the morning. We were visiting the hospital of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Namibia at Onipa, a few miles south of the Angolan border. The hospital staff, as many as could take the time, were crowded together for the daily devotional. Outside, the heat of the Kalahari Desert was beginning to be felt. Across the road lay the ruins of the church’s bombed-out printing press, which had been their great pride and hope. In the distance could be heard the engines of the dreaded South African army “hippos,” huge armored trucks that roamed everywhere, looking for anything “suspicious.”

A single doctor was in charge of the medical care of the hospital’s patient population of over 400. The relatives and friends of the patients, who had sometimes carried them long distances across the sand and wastelands, were camped in improvised huts and tents all around the hospital grounds. Everyone was in a state of exhaustion. Medicine was scarce. Little sicknesses and infections became big troubles. Food was in short supply. Help was willing, but untrained. Terror and death were at one’s elbow at every turn… and there was not relief in sight.

The doctor rose for a word of greeting. I don’t remember all of what he said because his first words were so surprising, “I love this place!” The majesty of his words moves me to this day. It was a Christmas statement, a statement of identity, of live, of attachment, a statement that was exactly appropriate. With those words, he freed those who depended on him from any obligation except that they might welcome his love. It was love that kept him at Onipa and Ondonguea, and all the impoverished children of God. He did not see his work as an arduous duty, but as something that satisfied hi heart. We didn’t need to laud his sense of duty; we could simply celebrate and wonder at his love.

Jesus looked at our sorry world and said in effect, “I love this place… I will never leave you nor forsake you. I am with you always.” Christmas has many things to say. Few are as rich and clear and unmistakable as what brought Jesus to the manger that midnight clear, his matchless love for this place and all of us in it. When you know that you are loved like that, there can be comfort and joy even in the hardest and most uncertain of times.

Go with God,

Pastor Jansen