“This is the palace that Jesus was born in.”
She pats my face with her hand, holds the paper high so that I can’t miss her drawing. In her art journal, she’s scrawled JESiS (backwards J) over that wee head tucked into the cradle, like a neon sign, so He can’t be missed. Sometimes I need that to see Him too.
“Now that is one very beautiful baby Jesus.” I smile and she dances happy. “And this is the palace roof?” I point to what looks like a gold onion dome.
She nods slow, unsure.
“Oh. So tell me, sweet,” I kneel down to really see the world through her eyes… “Tell be about Jesus being born in a palace.”
She shakes her head, those eyes all large. “Nooooo…. I know He wasn’t born in a palace really. I just want Him to be born in a palace — not in a BARN. Babies aren’t supposed to be born in barns! Pigs are!”
I sweep her mop of curls out of her eyes, this wisp of a girl who rises every morning in the dark to go out with her dad, her five siblings, to feed the sows at the barn. This girl knows the smell of a barn.
“Didn’t you read last night by the candles that we would call Jesus a Prince of Peace? He should have been born in a palace, Mama.” She cups my face, eyes begging.
And I stroke her cheek, her angst, and whisper soft, words for me.
“But Jesus knew ours was a world stuck in the mire and reeking with sin. Sort of like a barn with all the pigs squealing. He came as the Prince of Peace to the hurting and dirty places where we need Him most…” I search her eyes. A glimmer of understanding?
But she’s staring at her penciled Jesus. She drops down into my lap, and together, we gaze at the way she’s made the lines, shaped the world.
Her sister cuts stars for a nativity scene, her brother sketches a grotto at Bethlehem. Crayons and snippets and visions scatter everywhere. The house is a whir of creativity and it feels powerfully right, Edenic. This art is a way of looking for the Creator Who Comes, a way of expressing who we are and offering it back to the Artist.
Each Christmas we make, imitating the Prince of Peace, who came to Remake a broken down world.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God,” reads Mt 5:9.
“The Greek word for peacemakers is eirenepoios, which can be interpreted as “peace poets” suggesting that peace is a thing to be crafted or made,” writes Makoto Fujimura
.
“We need to seek ways to be not just peacekeepers, but to be engaged as “peacemakers.”
What if Christmas was about families gathering to be Peace Makers and Peace Poets, change makers who offered themselves in words and pictures and color and beauty? What if families created annual Portfolios of PeaceMaking, a collection of creative works that saw Jesus in the weeks of Advent through drawings and story? Peace poets and peacemakers who craft and write and draw and create and make peace with our hands, to become sons of God too with gifts for the Prince of Peace — making gifts for His wounded world.
Art, what Aristotle defined as “our capacity to make,” this “art should cause violence to be set aside,” posited Leo Tolstoy. What better way to “make the nations prove the wonders of His love” than to make and create, so that violence might be put aside this Christmas, the violence of oppression, of materialism, of poverty, of consumerism.
Wouldn’t the best thing to make this Christmas be peace?
I run my hand across her paper, this Jesus Babe in a palace, and her art, it teaches me about me. It cuts me to the quick: I do exactly what this four-year-old has done. I redraw Christmas too — make it about palaces and lights and winter wonderlands and forget that He comes to the neglected and unlikely — to the wounded places.
It is never too late to remake Christmas… to make it one that meets the Prince of Peace where He can always be found — with the poor and dispossessed.
“Sweet…” I tuck a curl behind her ear. “How would you like to draw a picture of Jesus for one of our Compassion children?”
She grins.
“Okay! For Anna. And I’ll color it… and this time, Mama?” She crawls up off my lap, turns to face me and I can see it in her eyes, how art remakes us — and the world.
“This time, Mama, Baby Jesus will be born in a barn.”
Would you like to be a ChristmasChange Maker?
Consider creating an annual ChristmasChange Portfolio of Creative PeaceMaking — a simple, organic expression of your creative selves!
5 Ways to Make the Best Things this Christmas
1. Leave an art journal out on a coffee table with a pencil throughout the holy-days — or hang a roll of paper on the back of a door. Leave a camera on the counter to encourage seeing glimpses of His beauty.
2. Encourage family members to recreate – draw, write, paint ways they have seen Jesus in their day — just leaving a pencil and journal laying open will invite doodles and ideas and joy.
3. Jot down a phrase, a quote overheard, a praise prayer in your collective PeaceMaking Portfolio. Be a Peace Poet for the Prince of Peace.
4. Consider snapping a picture of your family’s creative endeavors – your makings in art, in the kitchen, the workshop, the sewing room — and sharing with us at the ChristmasChange Makers group at Flickr.
Or upload a video at the ChristmasChange Makers Flickr group of your family poetry jam, your night of tap dancing, your impromptu night of songmaking! Have fun and enjoy the wonder of creating like our Creator Father!
5. Then share your art. With a sponsored child, an elderly shut in, a sick neighbor, a homeless person — anyone in need of a smile. Bring peace and healing to the wounded through the beauty of creativity. (Consider making copies of your art that you share, or photographing the original pieces you share, so that year to year, you leave a family legacy of making peace with art.)
Wouldn’t it be neat to gather as a community of ChristmasChange Makers making the very best thing this Christmas? Peace makers welcoming the Prince of Peace.
Q
4U:
What are you making this Christmas?
{ 4 trackbacks }
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you, Ann.
May God give us grace to see Him in a barn, and the stillness to hear what He has to teach us through the voices of our little ones.
Abiding in Him.
Becky
Oh, I am so excited about this Flickr Group and about the Family Journal.
What am I making this Christmas?
I’m going to make warm drinks every day after nap for my babies, and we’re going to sit at the table and talk about Christ’s coming, the first one and the second one. I’m going to let them drink out of glass.
I’m going to write a poem a week.
We’re inviting friends over on Tuesdays to sing on the front porch.
Peace?! Yes, sister, that’s something we can all make. Let the Prince of Peace reveal himself through our every dot, line, measure, and scribble.
This thought has been repeating over and over in my head and my heart:
If someone doesn’t know Jesus, how can they understand what He is, unless they understand what it is just to be loved?
We are desperately chasing after him to make His love known to the least of these…both in our new little community of 200 and across oceans where the sun (& the Son) shines in Uganda for orphans.
And in our chaos of unpacked boxes and homesick hearts, we unfolded baby Jesus and the rest of His barn beauties. We are making room for Him.
Blessings.
Thank you, Ann, for your inspiring ideas.
We have made a wonderful, messy gingerbread nativity.
It is NOT Martha Stewart approved–it’s a disaster, gumdrops and crushed peppermint in all the wrong places and broken parts glued together with icing (which does not dry clear).
But it’s beautiful.
My sweet little man, sitting in front of it, admiring his work and placing baby Jesus just right in the manger with the coconut straw, telling everyone, “This is baby Jesus. These gumdrops are Yuuuummy!”
It’s exactly what I want Christmas to be–loving time with my family even in the mess, especially in the mess.
We have our nativity set on top of the fireplace, in the center of the home. Jesus is not in it. We wait to put Jesus in until the day we finish our Jesse Tree. My children stare and point and talk about that day. In the meantime, all the figures stand and wait, expectantly incomplete.
And, this video was just a little too long to add to the Flickr group, but here’s my gang reciting Scripture in front of the Christmas tree: http://vimeo.com/7908624
I’m going to do this, Ann! I love your words and your challenge.
Just last night, we gathered around the table and my kids wrote carefully the words they think of when they think of Jesus, His attributes, really. We ran out of frames before we did words. We put the special slips of paper in ornate frames and they alone, adorn a tree, in the center of our table.
A true CHRISTmas tree.
Instead of exchanging gifts with each other, my girls and their cousins are getting together to express their artistic side by decorating Christmas cookies which we will take to a homeless shelter. (I’m sure they’ll eat plenty while they work!).
Anne, as always, you’re inspiring! Your words always touch places in my soul I didn’t know existed. So thank you.
I think this afternoon we’ll make a nativity scene. We’ve been talking about how Christmas is Jesus’s birthday (Fynn just had a birthday, so he’s all about it!). He’s been gathering presents for baby Jesus – so I think he’ll love to make a nativity scene to celebrate.
Beautiful words and ideas!
Beautiful! I love the idea of the art journal, but I’m afraid my 4 yr old artist would fill it up with squiggles and monsters before anyone else could have a chance at it, I will have to re-think it and adapt it for us a bit.
Every year we spend several weeks before Christmas preparing our hearts for Christmas Day with lots of story-time, Advent crafts, and Advent readings. We started early, so that we’ve done this since my oldest was a toddler and this is all they know. They still get gooey over Christmas presents, but we spend a lot of time making our Christmas celebration intentionally Christ-centered. These also include some service projects but I know that we can be more intentional in that area. We have an elderly friend in the nursing home that we really should visit for starters. Thanks for the reminder!
Ann,
You did it again! The inspiration to be creative and to grow outside the box is remarkable. Not just words of the father but the Art of the heavenly father. It tugged deep at something creative I submerged a very long time ago. I leaped when I read this. Thank you for the beautiful women of God you are. Sharing with others. Your life breathes the life of God in these bones. It refreshes my day. I’m going to do this! I am.
All my love,
Adrienne
It is always a blessing to read what you write. The Lord indeed does use you to be an encouragement in this dark world. He came to bring light and to give hope…it is so beautiful to slow down and reflect upon this truth at this special time of year.
We gather each evening to celebrate advent ~ inspired by the same article you were it seems…Focus on the Family about 10 years ago or so.
What will we make? Very often the children and I dedicate an afternoon to the creating of gingerbread men…it is a special time. We keep things simple around here and seek to remember and celebrate the REAL reason for CHRISTmas!
Thanks for your prodding in the right direction. I think a journal for each of the children is what I am just going to add to my list as we go out to shop right now.
Blessings,
Camille
I love that you pointed out how peacemaking is an *action*. Not an observing, or an inaction. That message can be applied to so so much, every single day.
xoxo
Ann – such beautiful words and inspired ideas. I must think of things to do here in this empty nest. I love the truth that the Father delights in our creativity. I want to do this.
Such beautiful words–such beautiful art for our Savior! And I love the reminder that He came to the needy, the neglected, the homeless!
Ann,
I was discussing art with a friend this week and we came to some conclusions. Art makes us step back and rethink the obvious. In the creation, it puts us in the story and demands that we interpret it. I love that your children are placing themselves in the story. I hope that we will encourage our kids to do the same. More importantly, I hope that we will enter the story through creation.
You encourage and bless.
We’ve been doing the little art projects, my 3 yr old is really into Chrismas trees. But didn’t know what to do with all these master pieces! So simple, but such a GREAT idea! Tomorrow we are going to deliver them to some seniors in our family. I think they will really value this. Maybe we’ll bring some extras to give to random people on route (as they are in homes/seniors complexs). Thanks!!!
Thanks for introducing us to Makoto Fujimura, and the idea of crafting peace, being a peace poet. Somehow instinctively I’ve always felt that time spent writing or making was important, but that the people who were out there being activists were doing so much more. This idea helps me restore the balance.
Thank you Ann.
This year our children and their cousins are buying gifts for each other at Ten Thousand Villages. They will explain where their gifts were made (Uganda, India, Guatamala). They are learning about giving twice…once to the person who made the item and who is being paid in a fair way and can support their family, and once to their cousin who will delight in it at Christmas!