Maybe it sounds heartless, but I wasn’t homesick this Christmas.
In my defense, though, this Christmas on the Race wasn’t my first Christmas spent away from home and family. In fact, I realized that what I actually missed was Christmas Break: the promised weeks that I’ve looked forward to each December for 16 years. I missed the freedom to do whatever I wanted with my days. I missed knowing that all of my friends would also be free to rehash the fall semester’s shenanigans and accomplishments while sipping peppermint mochas.
Without all of those worthy winter break distractions and without homesickness, I found it easier to focus on and rest in the awe of Jesus’ birth.
Seriously, what a time to have been alive! I imagined and relished the feelings of anticipation that must have surrounded the coming of God Himself to live with us and eventually fulfill His promises of salvation. As I reflected on the peace I had while being away from home during the holidays, I reflected on Christ’s mission to accomplish our peace with God. As I did so, there was a newness to the peace that was proclaimed at the birth of Jesus to me and during my quiet time, I found my thoughts floating back around to Jesus, Christmas, and peace.
I had this great mental image that I associated with Luke 2:14. Weird, I know-bear with me though.
There’s the earth, all dark and confusing. It’s chaos- all swirly with all of its hurt and wanting and trying. Underneath it all is a chord of anxiety and anticipation; anxiety because there just has to be more than to life than the man-made attempts to bring peace, and anticipation of that coming peace. The earth and its people are waiting, waiting, waiting on a promise that was made. Who would be the promised One to finally put fears and anxiety to rest-who would be the Prince of Peace?
During the school week leading up to Christmas, I felt the same anticipation and awe in my lessons for English class. Each day, I felt the Holy Spirit lead the lesson to places I hadn’t planned, and the way the lessons built on each other went way too well for me to be able to take any credit for that.
I’d decided to start the week by telling my class the story of Christmas from the beginning: that Christmas is the celebration of the greatest gift ever given: Jesus. I was teaching the girls of the pre-intermediate level, so I would be able to give them harder ideas and words, which was perfect.
I introduced them to Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” the verse that we would be reading together at the Christmas program they would put on for Christmas Eve.
“The world was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for this baby that would be given. Who is this baby that would be so big that the government would be on his shoulders?” I asked.
I underlined the word “Christ” in the word “Christmas” I’d written on the whiteboard and told them that it meant “savior,” and that Jesus Christ was that promised baby, that he is our Savior today because he’d chosen to come on that first Christmas. I told them what he’d saved us from: the wages of sin, death. At the end of class, I had them write down one question they had about the day’s lesson about Christmas. I loved reading them: “What country is God from?” “Why did God help the people?” “Where does Jesus stay now?” and looked forward to answering them throughout the coming days.
I’d covered a lot of ground that first day, and I knew that the rest of the week would probably have to be spent unpacking and elaborating on the amazing gift of peace with God.
On the second day of class that week, we did a craft together. We made little hearts by weaving paper, and the hearts doubled as little ornaments. I didn’t really have a plan for the class, so I decided to practice talking while we did our crafts.
“We’re making our heart ornaments today,” I said, “so we’re going to talk about our own hearts.” I drew a big heart on the whiteboard.
“We feel things, right? We call them emotions. When we say we feel things, we ususally think about our hearts, we say that we feel them here.” I said, touching my chest. “What kinds of things do you feel in your heart? What lives in your heart?”
The girls in my class caught on quickly, giving me words to write in the big heart on the whiteboard.
“Love!” “Sad(ness)!” “Anger!”
As we talked and used examples, they got to the words I’d hoped they would think about.
“You can be afraid in your heart.” One of my younger students said.
“Yes, you’re right!” I wrote “fear” in the heart on the whiteboard.
“Oh, you can feel stressed!”
“You can be hurt in your heart.” I heard from the back of the table the girls were all sitting at.
“You’re very right. Hurt can be in your heart. ” I said, adding it to the whiteboard.
After we’d filled the heart with words and couldn’t think of any more, I erased some of the similar words and left them with 9 “heart words” that they had to write sentences using: love, sad(ness), angry, happy, stressed, fear, hurt, jealous, and hate. I told them I would give them a 10th word that they hadn’t guessed yet at the end of class.
As the hour came to a close, I got their attention and returned to the whiteboard.
“Okay, I’ll give you the 10th word now,” I said. They looked at me curiously as I turned my back to them. In between all the other “heart words” I wrote “JESUS.”
“Jesus!?” Some of the giggled in surprise. I knew what they were thinking: the Christmas baby??
“Yes, Jesus!” I said, smiling. “One of your questions was where he lives now. Well, that’s where he lives! We talked yesterday about how he saves us from sin. When you ask him to save you, he does, and he will come and live in your hearts; he promised to send his Spirit.” I let that sink in for a minute.
“And, Jesus was a human, remember? So he had a heart too. He felt things like this, too,” I referred back to the heart on the whiteboard. “The Bible tells us that Jesus loved people, and that he got sad. It even says he cried. So he lives in our hearts, but he also holds our hearts. And because he made our hearts and knows how it feels to be human, we can trust him with our hearts. When I feel these things in my heart, I pray and talk to Jesus about it.”
Twelve beautiful hearts took in the truth, consideration in their eyes.
“You can talk to Jesus, too. Tonight, when you’re at home, you can ask him to help you make room for him to live in your heart, too.”
With that, we barely had time to practice our verse and run out the door to practice the dance that the students were all learning together for the Christmas Eve program.
After class, I sat next to my whitebaord, astounded at this unplanned lesson and the direction it had gone in. I hadn’t planned to talk about our hearts, but it had flowed so naturally. I thanked God for His hand in the day and excitedly thought about the next day.
Come the next morning, though, I had no new inspiration for a lesson. I thought and prayed about it during the manual labor of the morning, but I didn’t feel led to anything in particular. That afternoon, though, while biking to my hosts’ home where the BrightStart center is, a thought lodged itself firmly in my mind: “Love is patient, love is kind…”
Well, okay then. Here we go, Jesus. I thought. As I prepared for my class, I decided to go big and wrote 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 on the whiteboard. It looked monstrously long, and I almost panicked and changed course last minute. But I felt that it would work out, so I kept it.
My students were indeed surprised at my assignment. Under the guise of learning adjectives and adverbs, I explained, “We talked about our hearts yesterday, so today we’re going to talk about love. I want you to copy down all of this passage from the Bible into your notebooks. I know it’s long!”
When they were done, we identified all of the adjectives and adverbs that the Bible uses to describe love. We talked about things and people they love (they were horrified that I love geckos). I was just about done with the main grammar lesson from the passage, and I didn’t really know where to go next.
On a sudden impulse, I erased the verse on the board and added a couple new ones “God is love” and “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear.” I turned back to the class.
“If we know that God is love, and Jesus is God, that means Jesus is love, right? So these adjectives describe Jesus, too.” The class nodded their agreement. I drew their attention to perfect love.
“But what about perfect love? Can any of us do that? Can you always be patient? Do you ever fail?” I asked a couple of them if they, or anyone they knew, could love perfectly. The resounding answer, after a few examples, was no.
“Yeah,” I agreed with their responses. “I love my friends, but I fail them sometimes. I hurt them sometimes. I’m not always patient, and I am selfish. We can’t love perfectly, because we’re imperfect.” That seemed to make sense to them, so I went back to the word equation we’d come up with, that “Jesus is love.”
“What about Jesus? Can he love perfectly?” Scattered answers reached me. I reminded them about that he was the perfect sacrifice, the perfect Christmas gift given to us. When we’d decided that Jesus could indeed love perfectly because he is perfect, we went back to 1 John 4:18.
“Drive out? What does that mean?” one girl asked.
“It means…like, to make it go away.” I clarified. I took a big step forward with my right foot and thrust my arms forward in a pushing motion, like I was pushing heavy weight away from me. “Like, perfect love makes fear leave. It drives it out; it makes fear go away.”
“Are you afraid of things?” I asked. I knew it was a big question for them, but with the small group and relationship I’d built with them, I hoped they would answer.
“I’m afraid of geckos!” one girl said, laughing.
“I’m afraid of a broken heart!” another said dramatically, inducing lots of laughter.
“I’m afraid of tigers!” the youngest student said.
“Why are you afraid of tigers?” I asked.
“Because they can hurt me.” she said simply.
“I’m afraid of getting hurt, too.” I agreed.
“Some people are afraid of dying.” I heard one of my students answer cautiously.
“Yes, definitely. Why are they afraid of dying? Why does that scare them?”
There was some thoughtful murmuring. “Because we don’t know it?” one guessed.
“I think so, too.” I explained, “I think that we’re afraid of what we don’t know. Can we call someone who is dead ask them about it? Can we ask if it hurts or if it’s scary?” My students were laughing and shaking their heads, but there was a seriousness to this that I knew they were following.
“But if you remember, there is one person who died and didn’t stay dead. Jesus came back to life, right?” I heard their responses of “yes” as I turned back to the whiteboard. I drew a heart again, with the word “fear” inside of it.
“So this is how Jesus, with his perfect love, drives out fear.” I wrote “JESUS” in the heart and erased the word “fear.”
“Jesus died, so that we would never have to. Or, at least not spiritually. He took away that fear by dying for us; we don’t have to be afraid of dying or wonder what will happen, because the Bible tells us that if we have Jesus as our Savior, living in our heart, we’ll be with him forever. That’s salvation.” I made the pushing motion again. “I told you that Jesus can come and live in your heart. And when he does, Jesus tells fear to leave your heart.”
Three students had watched my every movement with rapt attention. Their eyes were at once serious and curious: Jesus the Christmas baby?
For an instant, I tried to remember the first time I’d heard the Good News of how Jesus loves perfectly, of how he drives out the fear of death. The awe and interest in their brown eyes must have mirrored my own at one point.
When we recited the verse for the program, I re-emphasized the “Prince of Peace” part of Isaiah 9:6. “He’s the Prince of Peace-Jesus gives you peace when he takes away the fear, the sin, and all the hurt in our hearts.” I had gone over a little bit on time, so we scurried out the door together to jump in on the dance practice.
For me, at the end of that day, my meditations on peace and Christmas had come full circle. The build-up of the Christmas story, the focus on our hearts, and then the lesson on what Jesus and his love does in our hearts in regards to fear and sin all came back to my thoughts on peace.
When Jesus was born, the peace that so many hearts full of fears of brokenness, death, (and probably tigers), had been waiting for had finally come. I thought again of the dark, swirly world and Luke 2:14, that tells us that when Jesus was born, a heavenly host accompanied the angel that told the shepherds about Jesus’ birth. This army of heavenly beings came “praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.'”
At Jesus’ birth, God was given glory and peace was proclaimed to the earth.
It’s the peace Paul proclaims in Ephesians when he writes, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
Because of Jesus, I have been brought near to God; he has made it possible for me to have peace with God. Not only that, but he is my peace, “For he himself is our peace…He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near.”
Jesus has made my peace with God secure; he has brought peace to me, my past, my future, my relationships, and my desires. All my “heart words.” He’s driving out every fear in those areas and bringing freedom.
It’s beautiful, good news.
It’s the news that every heart wants to hear, and has always wanted to hear: there’s a way to have true peace. The hearts and souls of the world don’t have to churn and exhaust themselves trying to accomplish it-it’s already been done.
As I shared this with my students over the week and built up to Christmas Eve, I was continually re-centered on the peace-making that Jesus does in my life. I love Christmas, and love remembering how the world waited for its King-and I loved revealing this to my students.
The Christmas Eve program was wonderful; only three of my students were there on time to read the verse we practiced, but they nailed it. The other nine or so showed up later, which was At the Christmas Eve program, the students were presented, with a translator, the full Gospel and Christmas Story.
I watched my students closely as they received the message and prayed, as I had all week, for their eyes and hearts to be opened. And although none of them outwardly told us they accepted Christ, I am hopeful that the message they heard-that there is peace and life with Jesus offered to them-changed their picture of Christmas. I know many of them had never heard the Christmas story or the Gospel before, and I pray that they remember what they learned in that week before Christmas.
On my final day of class, before the program, I had picked out some passages from the Bible to show them what the Bible said about them. I made a quiz in dictation to get them to write down sentences like “I am beautiful,” “I am worthy,” “I was made,” and “I am beloved.” Quite clever, I know. #thanksJesus
At the end of my time in that class my students’ notebooks were full of English lessons and Scripture, of the truth about Christmas, Jesus, and themselves. I can only pray that their hearts were left even more full than their notebooks, and know that Jesus will continue to bring his work in them to completion.
