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Our Poverty, His Dwelling Place

I love the Christmas season - the festive decorations, the Christmas parties, the family gatherings, the traditions, the joy that abounds. When I've been asked what my favorite day of the year is, I answer without pause: the twenty-four hours that begin around 4:00 on Christmas Eve. To me, those hours are sacred, reserved for just our family - what used to be "the four of us" and is now "the eight of us." During that time, work and business cease, no telemarketers call, no neighborhood child tries to sell us cookie dough or popcorn, laundry and errands can wait. This is time for us.

I'll make our traditional Christmas Eve dinner with Christmas music playing in the background, the tree twinkling with joy, the presents below it fairly bursting with the need to be opened. The guys work on a jigsaw puzzle or play dominoes or cards. The girls help me in the kitchen. We talk. We laugh. We love.

We eat dinner by candlelight, then attend Christmas Eve service. By 9:00, we've gathered in the living room. The house is lit solely by candles. We read the Christmas story and sing happy birthday to Jesus, a tradition we began many years ago to keep us mindful of the reason for such an extravagant celebration. We place the baby Jesus in what has been, throughout advent, an empty manger. We open gifts - one by one. We want to savor the joy each gift brings. We want to treasure each moment.

In the morning, their stockings are full as is my heart. I can sit back and watch my family and be content; more than content actually, my heart will be filled to bursting with the joy of it all. The rest of the day is lazy. We simply enjoy each other - play games, watch a Christmas movie, and go to the theater to see a movie we've chosen long before that day.

This year, my favorite day is going to be missing something - four somethings or rather someones to be exact. Our daughter, son-in-law, grand daughter, and grand son recently moved away and won't be able to make it back at any time during the holidays, nor will we be able to go to them.

Blessed are the poor . . .
Blessed are those who mourn . . .

Blessed are those who have not.

Henri Nouwen says it like this:
Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: "What is my poverty?" Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! "How blessed are the poor," Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty . . . Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.

I'm not a poor woman. I am rich beyond measure, not financially, but in relationships. I treasure the people that make my life full: the family into which I was born, the man I married, the family into which I married, my two wonderful children who are beautiful inside and out, those my children married, my grandchildren, my co-workers, my friends. . . but I want it all. I want ALL of my family with me this Christmas.

And yet if these empty places around our Christmas table, this lack - if this is my place of poverty, if this hole is the place where I have not, then that means that's exactly where God wants to come and where He wants to dwell.

I think I'm beginning to understand. It's true . . . blessed are those who have not.







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