A Christmas message from our Mission Director

At Strawberry Field, home of the Imagine piano, we encourage imagination. So imagine with me a world waiting for a hero. A world expecting crowns, palaces and power. A stage set for royalty, for grandeur, for glory but then, the most astonishing twist... No palace. No throne. No silk. No spotlights. No red carpet.  Just a stable, trough, swaddling strips, shadows and hay. In that quiet, forgotten corner of Bethlehem history changed forever.

In a way only God could have scripted, a quiet town welcomed a cast of humble everyday people. A working class couple, a business owner, shepherds and educated travellers witness an Angel flash mob and a magnificent star announce the Creator stepping into creation. Not with force, but love. Not in majesty, but in humility, hope was born and all who were part of it forever changed.

Often God's greatest work begins in the most ordinary places and within ordinary people.  If he can bring hope from hay and glory from grit, what could he do in the humble corners of your life. 

Grace loves to sneak in when we least expect it. Without fanfare and in the most unexpected ways, Christ, Emmanuel, enters our story?  Imagine that! 

Anna B. Jones wrote: “I (almost) always come limping into Advent desperate for light, but almost too tired to look for it. Then I remember—the Light came looking for me. And that’s the whole point.” 

So whether your Christmas looks like a Hallmark movie or a sitcom with burnt turkey remember this: Hope showed up in a stable. And it’s still showing up today.