Season of Advent

One of the implications of living in Jerusalem is that for the first time in my life, I am a religious minority. Christians comprise only 1-2% of the population in Israel/Palestine, a very small number. Coming from North Dakota where religious diversity often means Lutheran or Catholic, this is quite a different experience for me; one that I am really cherishing. Volunteering at the Helen Keller School for Special Education and Visual Impairments is no exception to this as the majority of my students are Muslim, along with quite a few of the teachers. However, nearly as soon as we flipped the calendar to December, the school began preparing for Christmas. We decorated the big tree for the lobby, made Christmas crafts, and blasted the Christmas album of Fairouz (a very popular Lebanese artist) across the entire PA system.

Earlier this month, I printed out a Christmas tree coloring page for one of my classes and while in class, the teacher asked me if I would tell the Christmas story to the students. All of the students in this class and the teacher are Muslim. So, I started telling the story and she helped to translate it into Arabic for the students. When I got to the part about the angels and the shepherds, the part from today's passage from Luke, the teacher looked at me and asked if I would sing the song. I was a little flustered, but assumed that she meant "Angels We Have Heard On High", so I obliged and began singing. The students were busy coloring, not paying much attention to me, until I got to the Gloria's. It was at this moment that the students realized they knew the song, stopped coloring, and began singing with me. It was such a beautiful thing. After I was finished, they sang the entire song back to me in Arabic and I was speechless. I do not think that I will ever forget that simple moment and the exchange, the sharing of our cultures and our faiths that happened there. I was reminded in that moment that the coming of Jesus, this amazing story is for everyone; people like the shepherds and people like the wise men.

Gloria, indeed.

 

-Sarah