For Wilshire Baptist Church
On Monday morning, Wilshire library volunteers spent a few hours packing up the 86 nativities that have lined the tops of the shelves since before Christmas. The nativities belong to Linda Garner, who has collected them from every corner of the globe. Their display is her annual holiday gift to the Wilshire community, and if you’ve never seen them, you should make a point of checking them out next December.
Packing up the nativities is not without challenges, mainly matching the sets to their respective boxes and then figuring out which little cubby hole the pieces go into and how best to wrap and secure those that don’t have specific boxes. It’s also not without risks, because many of the nativities are delicate and fragile, hand crafted from native materials used in the countries of their origin. And so this time around, one of the Styrofoam nesting boxes for one of the sets broke apart and a couple of large figures landed on the floor. The carpet was covered with a blizzard of white Styrofoam fragments, and among them was a piece of a broken halo.
Linda was good natured about it and let everyone know not to worry because she is “good with glue.” That seems to indicate perhaps some of the other figures we handle every year have had repairs. If so, there’s no way to tell. She obviously is very good with repairs.
I think God is that way too — very good with repairs. I’d like to say God is very good at mending our broken halos, but the truth is nobody has a real halo. Still, every last one of us needs repair at one time or another. Whether physical, spiritual or emotional – one at a time and often simultaneously – we’ve all needed repairs. And who better to do that than the one who created us.
But, as is God’s way, we are called upon to help with those repairs. Medical professionals handle the physical fixes, while counselors and clergy often tend to the emotional and spiritual repairs. Those of us who don’t work in those professions are still part of the repair process, whether we want to be or not. It comes down to how we treat each other.
The difficult part of that is our brokenness is not always evident. Terms like “walking wounded” describe the reality that so many people are hurting emotionally and spiritually. And because we can’t see that, we can inadvertently hurt someone further by being brusque, dismissive, in a hurry, impatient or just plain inhospitable.
One thing all of Linda’s nativities have in common, regardless of the style or material or country of origin, is a baby Jesus at the center of the scene. And seeing the baby should remind us of the man who grew up and gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and helped the lame to walk. That is hard to imagine and certainly nothing we can relate to. But, he also just spent time with people; he looked into their eyes and listened to them, heard their stories, took them seriously, showed them respect and courtesy.
That is something we can relate to; that is something we can do that can help bring spiritual and emotional healing. Giving that kind of attention perhaps can help someone know they don’t need a halo to be worthy of our love and respect.