This Christmas, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is focusing on “Let Children Live” – A campaign that Amnesty International and Save the Children started to focus on the more than 2 million children who are living in the occupied Palestinian territories. Over the last two years, we have seen the deaths of between 15 and 20,000 children in the Gaza Strip. Previously, the idea of this number of children being killed, and anyone given conflict, would have been considered unfathomable. But it is today’s reality.

As we consider this Christmas Day, the birth of the Christ child, fully human and fully God, it is particularly meaningful that our Savior came to the Earth as a vulnerable and innocent baby. A child in need of protection, care, food, and safety.

These are all of the things that children in Gaza need and require, just as children throughout the Middle East and the world must be protected and cared for as precious gifts from God.

Today, I imagine the courage of Mary and Joseph. Before their marriage, not only being pregnant and about to give birth to a child, but about to become the parents of the Savior of the world. What a responsibility to bear! What courage their journey must have demanded!

Mary and Joseph traveled together to Bethlehem, to return to the place of Joseph’s ancestors, without knowing whether or not they might have been received. Not yet married, pregnant not only with an unborn baby, but knowing the special place that child would have in the future of the world. Only to find there was no place for them to lay their heads!

How often do we have certainty in our hearts about that which God called us to do? Only to then experience obstacles that seem to stand in our way? And yet Mary and Joseph did all that they were supposed to do. Caring for the infant child whom God brought into their lives so unexpectedly. Only that we might have such courage!

This Christmas, as we celebrate the good news of the birth of baby Jesus, may we be inspired by the courage His earthly parents displayed. Might we keep in mind all of the children in the world, especially in Gaza and Palestine, who have no places to lay their heads. Might we truly seek to “Let children live…” in the way that God intended – that they might flourish – and have all that they need to nourish their minds, bodies, and souls as they grow into youth and adulthood. This is my prayer for the children of Gaza who have lost their homes, family members, and experienced such profound horrors these past two years. I pray for the opportunity to flourish and thrive, for all of the children who were orphaned on October 7, 2023 and in the horrors of war and ethnic cleansing that followed. God makes a way – when there seems to be no way. That is the hope we celebrate this Christmas.

May we hold onto this hope – so exemplified in the birth of the living God, incarnated into flesh, and brought here to earth as the Savior of the World.