Mennonite Weekly Review

Articles : Holiday Reflection

Dec. 12, 2011 issue

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  Photo by Ryan Rodrick Beiler

  Search for the Christ Child

  For 23 years my congregation, Oak Grove Mennonite Church in Smithville, Ohio, has treated our community to “Search for the Christ Child,” a live nativity walk-through. As a guide, I have the privilege of taking guests to a time long ago and a country far away — and also to ponder the circumstances and meaning of Jesus’ birth. Every year a new question comes to mind as I review the amazing sequence of events.

  Just like the wise men, we follow a star from site to site, trusting that something bigger than us is happening. Our first stop foretells that this will be a trip of unexpected happenings, because we meet old lady Elizabeth. Wrinkled, stooped and needing a cane, she tells us that God cares about her as a woman and that she will finally have a baby. One year a little boy looked at her a moment, then said, “That’s a fake bump! Old ladies can’t have babies!”

Dec. 14, 2009 issue

• Christmas feature: Forever family

  “We have an emergency,” the social worker said. “A 5-month-old girl needs a home immediately. Will you take her?”

Dec. 15, 2008 issue

• Winter’s promise: the coming light

  In Texas the sun is always bright, always warm and always present. At least that’s how I chose to remember my home state during my first Chicago winter.

Dec. 17, 2007 issue

• A reminder of the love that binds Mary and her son

  One of the most frequently painted of all icons, the “Vladimir Mother of God” reminds us of the love that binds Mary and Jesus and also of the connection between Mary and ourselves.

• Mary and Jesus: Did e’er such love and sorrow meet?

  I don’t consider myself a hoarder, nor am I particularly sentimental. Several times a year I tear through our basement to remove at least some of the flotsam and jetsam that wash up there.

Dec. 18, 2006 issue

• Christmas fully alive, snakes and all

  I didn’t want to be at that Thanksgiving Eve service. This was no fault of its gifted leaders; rather, it had been an unusually intense week amid sicknesses in the congregation I pastor. I just wanted to be home reading that gripping novel.

Dec. 19, 2005 issue

• Risking the journey because of Christ

  Pagan astrologers from Babylon — from the region of modern Baghdad — likely were the first to worship the Christ child. In their journey to Bethlehem we see the cross-cultural nature of salvation in Jesus Christ, and we learn something about our mission in the world today.

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