the 94-year-old lady, alone in a care facility, her family dead and gone, and no one to visit her. She’s sitting in her wheel chair, waiting for dinner outside the dining room. It’s still two hours ’til dinner.

caring for parents unable to care for themselves, cleaning up after them in not the most pleasant of ways, helping mom into her bed, as she did when I was infant and unable.

the middle-aged lady, working at the mini-mart at ten PM on Christmas eve, waiting to go home to wrap her gifts for mom.

the single mom with a day off, sleeping in to rest and using the day, Christ’s birthday, to catch up on chores, alone.

people streaming into candle light services, singing Silent Night and not personally knowing the savior of their souls.

people rushing around from family to family, making sure they get it all in on Christmas day.

the homeless man, braving cold sleet to survive, any love left in the world lost on him.

the curmudgeonly Norwegian engineer, wandering out the dusk of his life puttering up to the mini-mart for Camels, smoking his lungs away in the Gazebo outside. His walker makes it harder.

Jesus, moving into our neighborhood, taking on our brokeness, lonliness, and pain, to give us a new lease on life.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 24th, 2007 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.