A Christmas Message From Pastor K

Christ was a stranger; you went out and welcomed Him in [Matt 25:35] 

Christmas time comes when homes and streets are decorated with Christmas trees and lights are all over. When we do that, sometimes some people have their beloved family and friends in their minds who they will be preparing to meet and thereafter celebrate, exchange gifts, and share life together. Such moments of coming together are hope refilling and they create beautiful experiences we can carry throughout the coming year. In Zimbabwe, around Christmas time, people travel all over the country to their rural or birthplace homes for family reunions, where they do whatever is fun, to celebrate those times together. 

That sounds nice, especially for those with family and friends to share these activities. What about those who do not have families to go to, because of circumstances beyond them? One of the many good things I saw happening in some of our Churches was the packaging and dedication of Christmas presents in shoe boxes. They will be sent out into various parts of the world to people who we will never know and who will never know us. We may wonder how it is and how it feels to spend Christmas time with people who are not family but total strangers to us. 

Through these gifts, the hearts of sharing generously, the joy of packaging them, and sending them off to be with other people, is the best way we can spend Christmas time in the company of people to whom we are total strangers. The people whom we do not know, but we make to feel what it means to be a part of a family and to smile as they open a gift box. 

Christmas is always an opportune time to celebrate how our families are much beyond those we often focus on. We reflect on God, when he packaged himself, and sent himself out and away to be part of humanity, and a creation that was alienated from God’s family on account of sin. May they become the household of God who can feel and understand what it means to be a part of God’s family. 

Christmas is our opportunity for family to be together with and as strangers.

A blessed Christmas to us all. 

 Revd Kurauone Mutimwii