New Underwear

I’ve been thinking a lot about underwear lately. I know that seems like an odd topic during one of the most sacred seasons of the year for Christians. Underwear seems so…common…kind of shameful…dirty. You see I always stuff my children’s stockings with underwear. The boys always laugh and put theirs on their head. The girls check out if I got the right kind and what size they are. And it’s gotten much more difficult to find the right type since everyone is growing up and has opinions about such things. This practice started years ago when they were babies and I didn’t want to put too much candy in their stockings, so I stuffed them full with underwear and socks. Now it’s more of a tradition than anything else.

Restoration Community Church has “adopted” a family so we can provide Christmas gifts for them. The family consists of a single mother and her two sons, 9 and 14. They have been living on the streets for the last year and a half. They just moved into an unfurnished apartment. We have asked the mother numerous times what she would want for Christmas gifts. Her consistent answer…. underwear. She’s not asking for a mattress, furniture, silverware, blankets…simply underwear. I’m going to get her underwear as well as a few other necessities. As she receives the gifts on Christmas day, I hope she senses God providing for her in the most ordinary and sacred ways.

As we’re all scurrying around this season going to parties, buying gifts, and preparing food; I can’t help but think of the 10,000 plus people living on the streets of Denver who primarily just want a clean pair of underwear for Christmas. And I think about Jesus who came into this world in physical form through the birth canal of a young unwed teenager in a dirty stable. It seems so dirty…kind of shameful….common. The sacred and the ordinary all wrapped in strips of cloth. My prayer for myself this season is that I don’t loose sight of the mystery and majesty of God entering our world one night 2000 years ago.