Calle 5 #14-32
La Mesa, Colombia
aaronlaurak@gmail.com
Christmas Greetings
Dear family and friends,
We wish you unseasonably warm Christmas greetings as we celebrate the holiday season this year in Virginia. As we prepared to come home for this brief visit, we were excited by the thought of seeing snow. We are now ten days into our trip and it doesn't look like there's any on the way. But the 60 degree temperatures still feel a bit chilly to us, coming from La Mesa where it's usually closer to 80!
It has been truly delightful to spend Christmas with family this year. We began our time with Aaron's family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and are now enjoying the company of Laura's family in Harrisonburg, Virginia. In some ways the 15 months that we've been away don't seem like a great deal of time. It's been easy for us to feel at home once again in this culture, at least during this short stay. And Abigail has not had any trouble warming up to our families. We are so glad to see her bonding with them and making good memories.
Below you will find a Christmas Eve sermon that we preached Sunday morning at our home church, Zion Mennonite, of Broadway, Virginia. This was our first sermon that we did as a couple. In the dark print you will find Aaron's lines, and the light print is Laura's part. It's true what they say about sermon preparation: the shorter the message, the longer you have to prepare! We worked hard to squeeze this message into the 15-minute time slot we were given during the service. But we feel good about the result, and wanted to share it with you as our reflection on Christmas this year.
Blessings to you as you make room for Christ to be born in your heart this year.
With love,
Aaron, Laura & Abigail
God’s Kingdom of Friendship
(Psalm 80:1-7, Micah 5:2-5a, Luke 1:39-55)
Top 5 Reasons to Spend Christmas in Colombia
5. Everyone has off for a month. From mid-December to mid-January nearly everyone has vacation. This is great except when your need some repairs done at your house and no one will come to do them.
4. Fireworks and festive music in the streets on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Double the excitement, double the noise, and double the sleepless nights.
3. Singing Christmas songs with lots of nonsense syllables like tuki, tuki, tuki, or tutaina, tuturuma. As if learning Spanish weren’t hard enough, then you find out the Christmas songs you’re learning are meaningless!
2. Although there is little emphasis on advent, the church makes up for it by having an extra special, extra long Christmas service. Part of this is due to the Protestant desire to be different from Catholics, and part of it is due to the fact that Colombians throw great parties, but have trouble planning ahead.
1. The climate is warm enough to wear shorts, go swimming, and pick fresh mangoes, oranges and bananas on Christmas day. The only snow visible is on the tops of mountains you can sometimes see in the distance.
Despite all the great reasons to spend Christmas in Colombia, we are very grateful to have the chance to be here with family and friends this holiday season.
We are also thankful for this opportunity to reflect on God’s word to us this morning, and share a few stories from Colombia in the process.
Today’s scripture passages cry out for and proclaim the advent of God’s kingdom and its unlikely king, the newborn baby Jesus.
The psalmist longs for God’s salvation, pleading: Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved (80:7).
The prophet Micah promises the birth of a Messianic leader whose reign will extend to the ends of the earth, saying, “He will be their peace” (5:5).
And finally Luke the physician recounts Mary’s visit to her relative, Elizabeth. The baby in her womb leaps for joy upon hearing Mary’s voice, and Elizabeth exclaims, “Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (1:43).
Mary then bursts into song, praising the Lord for saving his humble, poor, hungry, and fearful servants, and fulfilling his promises: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendents forever, even as he said to our fathers” (1:54-55).
We’ve heard Luke’s rendition of the Christmas story so often that I think we tend to miss its significance. The hope of Israel, the inauguration of the Messiah’s kingdom that will stretch to the ends of the earth, that will bring peace and righteousness to humankind, is coming to the world in the form of a helpless babe. Can this child really fulfill the promised kingdom?
Sometimes it’s easy for me to see why first century Jews had such a hard time accepting Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament’s promises about the Messiah. What kind of kingdom starts in a feeding trough and ends with its king nailed to a cross? How does that bring restoration and hope to the chosen people of Israel?
Frankly, the quaint little story of baby Jesus being born in a manger with cattle lowing and angels singing in the fields sometimes just seems so powerless and irrelevant when compared to the destructive forces we see at work in our world, then and now.
That’s why we need to experience a conversion in the way we see the kingdom of God and its role in human history, and our own personal histories. That’s really what the Christmas story is about: realigning our understanding of the world and our place in it based on God’s surprising kingdom brought near through the birth of Christ Jesus.
God’s kingdom comes in unexpected ways. How does it surprise us? How is it different from what the world teaches us?
It seems to us that most of the world’s kingdoms are ruled by fear. One of the most common words we hear today in society is the word security. Security from terrorists. Border security. Economic security. Job security. Security in shopping malls. Security in schools. Security from identity theft. Security from computer viruses. We’re afraid of so many things that we can hardly even enjoy the life we’re trying to protect.
God’s kingdom is not based on fear. It’s a kingdom of friendship. In the Christmas story, God shows us that his greatest longing is to be our friend. Rather than relate to us from a position of strength and distance—characteristics we see in many world leaders—God chooses to relate from a position of vulnerability and intimacy. In Jesus, God becomes like us, looks at us face to face, and sees the world he created through our eyes. He invites us to become part of his kingdom of friendship, built on trust, faith, and love.
Worldly kingdoms hope to find peace through establishing security. The surprise of God’s kingdom is that peace is a person. It is in relating with and following that person, Jesus Christ, that we find peace for ourselves and can truly experience it in our relationships with others. As the prophet Micah proclaims, the Messiah born in Bethlehem will be our peace (Micah 5:4-5).
We’ve been discovering in our work as missionaries in Colombia, that evangelism is not so much about strategies and programs as it is about making friends. We emulate God’s own approach to mission when we sit down with people, relate to them at eye-level, and become friends with them. It’s a vulnerable position, because people can ignore us, use us, or reject us. But in the end we believe it is both more faithful to God’s kingdom, and more effective.
We’ve seen God’s kingdom of friendship at work in our relationship with young people in the youth group. One example of this is our friendship with a teenage girl named Jenny (not real name). It began when we sat down with her at a soccer game last fall and started talking.
We then invited her to Abby’s 1st birthday party. After all the other guests left, she and another girl lingered for two hours, talking about their hopes and dreams. It felt very natural to then invite them to church. They started coming and eventually became active members of the youth group.
As the friendship grew, we discovered that her family has many difficult issues, including money mismanagement, debts, and conflicted relationships. While at school and church she was a sweet, eager young lady, at home she was often angry and anti-social. The conflict between these church and home personalities grew, and she dropped out of baptism class and came to church and youth group less.
As we continued to relate to her, her double personality began to manifest itself more dramatically, with symptoms that resembled anxiety attacks. She eventually admitted that she was hearing voices. To me the need for professional counseling and psychiatric help was apparent, while other church leaders saw the need to rebuke evil spirits. Because of her family’s precarious financial position, she has been more open to receiving prayer for her health than going to the hospital to be treated through medicine.
It continues to be a struggle. Sometimes during youth meetings she’ll have an attack of anxiety or sudden mood swings that require intervention. One of the leaders will sit apart with her and listen and pray with her. It requires a great deal of energy and patience, and can honestly be draining.
But we have seen progress: she is coming back to church and youth group and just seems like a happier person. We are so grateful that we didn’t give up on her or the friendship. A strategy-driven approach to ministry might have given up on her a long time ago. But God doesn’t do that with us. Like a friend he walks patiently with us through the ups and downs of life, trying to bring out the best in us.
We’ve also seen this friendship approach at work in the church’s outreach to disadvantaged families in a nearby town. Over the past three years, Pastor Martín González has been visiting three “invasion” communities, squatter neighborhoods built on non-zoned land on the edge of town. Though there are other churches in town, they have mostly ignored these needy families.
Part of the ministry includes gathering the children for singing, games, and Bible stories. The church has organized and distributed school kits and health kits. And there is an annual Christmas party with food and gifts. But the main reason for the success of this ministry because of Martín’s willingness to simply be present in the community, to build friendships. Rather than show up, give some handouts, and then invite them to church, he has taken time to build trust.
In fact, when he first began the outreach, many families were suspicious of him and this “sect” he represented. But his consistent love and warmth has won them over. Earlier this year when we did a door-to-door survey of community needs, we received almost unanimous support for opening a church in the area. God’s kingdom of friendship continues to advance in surprising ways.
We have also heard exciting things about how God is moving among you here at Zion. We applaud the focus on community outreach that has taken shape, and the work of Larry and Marilyn specifically. We also hope that the new construction project can open up ways to minister to needs in the area. And once again owe you our deepest thanks for your generous financial support toward us and other mission workers.
As we celebrate Christmas this year, God extends his loving hand of friendship to us once again. How have you responded to God’s offer to become your friend through Jesus? Are you living your life based on the world’s kingdom of fear, or God’s kingdom of friendship?