Make Room

Every year on Christmas Eve, the city of Lima is inundated with thousands upon thousands of poor people and families. They come to Lima from the mountain provinces of Peru every December 24 to beg for money and/or food, in the hope that the citizens of Peru's capital city will be full of Christmas cheer and generosity. It is common on Christmas Eve to stop at a red light in Lima, and to have your car surrounded by dozens of impoverished women and children, looking for a piece of fruit cake or a cookie or a coin.

Something that we have done every year in Lima is to reach out to these poor families. They are usually in Lima for just a day or two, and then they return to their native provinces. We prepare enormous quantities of "goody bags" for them, which are filled with juice boxes, candy canes, chocolates, cookies, and other Christmas treats. Last year we gave out over 1,000 of these goody bags to the children and families on the streets of Lima on Christmas Eve.

Luke 2:7 tells us how Mary gave birth to Jesus and placed him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Similarly, most people in Lima have no room, in their hearts, for the poor who flood the city every Christmas Eve, looking for a bit of the true Christmas spirit.

Wherever in the world you are doing ministry, I am sure that a similar situation exists. Make room for the impoverished and the ignored this Christmas. Fill up a bunch of goody bags with Christmas treats and hand them out. The bags may contain nothing more than a few cookies and candies, but they'll also be filled with the love of Jesus, and that's the most important gift that we can give to anyone, anywhere in the world, this Christmas.