My wife is going to be away this coming weekend and she asked me to use the time to finish up some of our Christmas shopping. Horrors! It's not that I don't like giving people gifts. I actually enjoy that part of it. But facing the malls and the shops . . . that's another matter! All the commercialism seems so contrary to the true meaning of Christmas. Then again, there is the Jersey story. Let me explain.
Several years back now, there was a young woman from my parish while I was in New Jersey who was facing a difficult pregnancy. And she was far from home. At one point she was rushed to a specialty unit in a Philadelphia hospital Her unborn baby had developed serious problems, and treating the fetus would have put the mother at some real risk.
Meanwhile, the young woman's mother-in-law was many miles away. She was able to pray. She did her best to support her son and her daughter-in-law with visits and phone calls. Still, she worried. More than that, she was afraid.
But Christmas was coming, and she had things that needed to be done, including some last minute shopping. So with a heavy heart she headed off to the mall. She wrestled the traffic, found a parking spot, and was exhausted before she even got inside.
As she passed through the mall hallways, she came across a group of school children singing in one of the mall courts. She sat down to listen, and soon the poignancy of their Christmas carols just washed over her, and she began to weep.
One of the school children's moms was seated next to her. She reached over and gently touched her arm. "Are you all right," she asked.
With that, it all came flooding out: my friend's fears, her worries, and her tears. The singer's mother turned out to be a woman of faith, and within seconds she gathered up three of her friends, and right there in the middle of the largest shopping mall in New Jersey, they prayed for a woman they had just met, her daughter-in-law a hundred miles away, and a baby not yet even born.
After my friend finished telling me the story she said, "John, I'm sure God sent those young mothers to tell me, 'You know where I am, and you know you're what you're doing, so just keep doing it.'"
At Christmas Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus, the one known as Emmanuel. It means, "God with us." I guess if God can show up in a shopping mall in New Jersey, God can show up anywhere! So I'll go look for presents this weekend--but maybe it will be a better experience if I also look for God.
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