The Child Born Brings the Light of Justice and Peace

One of my dearest friends passed away on Thanksgiving Day.

I’ve typed that sentence a dozen times now, and it still doesn’t feel real. Being with my friends and her family during those first raw hours and days was both devastating and sacred. There’s an ache in my heart that Hollie is no longer with us—an ache I suspect will never fully go away. But in the midst of my grief, I keep thinking about something extraordinary.

Hollie was an organ donor. And while we were sitting with shock and sorrow, four families scattered across the country received phone calls on Thanksgiving Day. Four families learned that a match had been found. Four people received the gift of life because Hollie’s life ended. They get to spend this Christmas season with their loved ones. They get to see another sunrise, share another meal, love another day. And who knows how those individuals will make their mark in the world, how their lives will ripple outward in ways we can’t even imagine.

It doesn’t make sense, death bringing life, loss creating gain, one life poured out so that others might live. And yet here we are. Hollie’s gift to those families was extravagant, a gift filled with hope and love.

As I’ve wrestled this past week with both hope and grief, joy and loss living side by side in my chest, I began to think about another extravagant gift. I thought about that night when love, light, hope, peace, and joy came into the world wrapped in a tiny baby who became the savior of the whole world. God’s greatest gift, born in a manger. What a strange and beautiful way to save us; not with power and armies, but with vulnerability and humbleness.

There were no phone calls back then to let people know the Messiah was coming, but angels delivered that news to shepherds—outsiders, the overlooked, the last people anyone would expect God to choose. I wonder how Mary felt, holding in her arms the gift the world didn’t yet know it desperately needed. How did Joseph feel, protecting this fragile life that would save all life? God was sending his Son into the world to save the world, and he chose the margins to make the announcement. He chose poverty over palace, obscurity over fanfare. A gift of life like no other, given in the most unimaginable way.

I am so undeserving of this gift. But whether or not I deserve such a gift was never the point. God gave this gift to me… to us… because he loves us. Full stop. Not because we earned it. Not because we’re faithful enough or good enough or put-together enough. He gave it freely, lavishly, to the broken and the grieving, to the doubters and the strugglers, to those of us who, at times, can barely whisper “I believe.” The depth of love in this gift calls me to something more, but not because I have to prove I’m worthy of it. I never will be. None of us will. And that’s exactly the point. It calls me to share it… to live in response to such outrageous grace, to let it spill out of me not from obligation but from overflow.

Here’s what I’ve been wrestling with this week: once Christmas is over and we’ve celebrated the birth of Jesus, it’s easy to forget about this extravagant gift. Much like the material gifts we receive, over time, the joy they gave us fades, and we move on to the next thing. The wrapped packages under the tree get opened, admired, and then eventually tucked away or forgotten. But a gift that gives life demands something different from us. It demands that we remember. That we live in response. That we let the magnitude of what we’ve been given change how we move through the world. It means that I want to intentionally work at not forgetting.

So how do we keep ourselves passionate about the gift we’ve been given in a Savior? We keep showing up. We worship, we pray, we sing. We gather with others who are also trying to live in response to this gift. We tell the story again and again—to ourselves, to our children, to anyone who will listen—because in the telling, we remember. And in the remembering, we’re changed.

Here’s what I know to be true for me: I’m standing in the middle of Advent, having just watched my best friend’s death bring life to four strangers. I’m holding grief and gratitude in the same breath. And somewhere in that impossibility, I’m catching a glimpse of what that night in Bethlehem means; that death and life, loss and hope, sorrow and joy can somehow exist together. That God doesn’t wait for us to have it all figured out before he shows up. That he comes to us in our mess, in our doubt, in our overwhelming inability to comprehend the magnitude of what he’s offering.

Emmanuel. God with us. Not God far away waiting for us to clean ourselves up, but God present, God close, God choosing to dwell right here in the middle of our beautiful, broken, ordinary lives.

The work of living in response to such extravagant love isn’t about proving ourselves worthy. It’s about letting the wonder of it transform us. It’s about standing in the presence of something so extraordinary that all we can do is whisper, “I can’t believe you did this for me.” And then, in the whispering, finding ourselves changed.

I invite you to let the wonder of it wash over you this Advent season. The God of the universe chose to enter our world as a baby, love itself took on flesh and breath. On one extraordinary night, hope was born in a manger, and nothing would ever be the same. Emmanuel, God with us, not distant but present, choosing to dwell among us. May you be caught up in the beauty of this radical act of love—infinite power wrapped in infant helplessness, the Word made flesh. In the moments when you catch glimpses of the extraordinary breaking into the ordinary, may you recognize these as invitations to participate in something far bigger than yourself. And when the wonder fades—because in the rhythm of daily life, it sometimes does—may you return again to that night, to the manger, to the gift that changed everything. The work of living in response to such extravagant love isn’t about proving ourselves worthy… it’s about letting the wonder of it transform us, and through us, illuminate the world.