A Child Is Born
At a previous church late one night, I got a call from a couple in the church that we were friends with. They had felt a call to become foster parents and just that day had completed the certification process and went out that night to eat, joking to each other that they didn’t know how many more nights they might have to go out to dinner just the two of them. While at dinner, they got a call from the Department of Children’s Services saying they had taken five siblings, all under the age of five, out of their home due to neglect and they were looking for a couple to foster them. FIVE CHILDREN! ALL UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE! That will make anyone stop and think twice, especially a couple whose certification was only mere hours old. The couple said to bring them on. It was my job to stop and buy diapers. I asked what sizes to another friend helping out, and she said just buy some of all the sizes. I did and went over to meet them. There were only four there, though, that night. The reason DCS became involved is because the family had to call 911 when the youngest, who was only two months old, became unresponsive. The EMT’s saw he was drastically malnourished with scabies all over his tiny little body. As they rushed him to the hospital, they called in to the authorities about the conditions and the other four children. All of the children were removed from the home. The next day, one of the two parents and I went to visit the infant.
He was alone and looked so pitiful lying there, skin just hanging off his bones, covered in scabies. The dad picked him up and held him and we both cried. Would he live was the question neither of us could speak. I had brought an olive wood, handmade cross from Bethlehem (the one in Palestine) that we would give to people in time of need to remind them of God’s presence with them. In my tears, I remembered the cross and talking to this unresponsive two month old, I told him I was leaving this in his room to remind him and all who entered his room that God was there with him. He was not alone. I grabbed his limp hand and put the cross in it just so he could feel the smooth edges of the cross. We both almost lost it when that baby latched on to that cross and would not let go. As I type this, I am getting goosebumps thinking about that moment. I have a picture on my phone of that pitiful two month old holding onto that cross for dear life.
This story did not happen at Christmas, but it is the story of Christmas. Today, all five children have been adopted by this couple whose time as foster care parents lasted only a few hours. All five children are healthy and happy and thriving as a family. The parents offer a lot to their children. The children offer as much or more to their parents. Their world is always crazy and chaotic and beautiful. And that little two month old is a full on mess these days, and there is no doubt in my mind that on that day in the hospital when I put that cross in his hand, God spoke truth into his life that he had never been alone in all of his young life and would never be alone no matter how long he lived.
Christmas is upon us, friends. Wherever you find yourself this Christmas Eve, I hope you hear that message. Christmas broke through everything that is wrong with our world and offered us the gift of Emmanuel, God is with us. I have no doubt a two month old understood that at the perfect time, and I hope you do this day as well. God is with you. Right now. Wherever you are and whatever you are going through. This is the gift Christmas gives us. “For she shall conceive and bear a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us.”
