Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 23 verse 13:
13 “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.
Last night Second B hosted our annual Christmas party for Parent Life, a local Youth for Christ ministry working to serve pregnant and parenting teens. We had sixty-plus parents and children and volunteer mentors with us for dinner in the fellowship hall and then moved into the Grand Hall to sing carols and take pictures with Santa around the Christmas tree. Members of our church also acted as hosts for the Parent Life families, providing age-appropriate gifts for their children and sharing the meal with them around the fellowship tables. It's always the wildest Wednesday night of the year, with babies crying and toddlers wandering and diapers changing -- all during the prayer time. For me, it's just the way that Jesus would want us spending Christmas.
Last night Parent Life's executive director Renee Morales spoke briefly to our church and said what she says each Christmas, thanking us for welcoming these parents and their children into our church community. She reminded us that each of the mothers in the room had a choice about the lives of these children and chose to bring these children into the world, though most of their pregnancies were unplanned. It was a reminder that while we were welcoming these children among us for a night, their parents had welcomed them for the rest of their lives. I thought of Mary and of Joseph and the great choice they each made -- perhaps as teenagers -- to welcome the baby Jesus into their lives.
As Renee's speech suggested, Parent Life would not be welcome to celebrate Christmas in any and all churches. The idea of throwing unwed parents a party seems for some a reward for bad decisions.
That's one way to see it. But I think seeing it that way misses the most important decision these teen parents made -- the decision to choose life.
And it also misses out on a really good party.
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