Last week I walked into The Café at Thistle Farms for back-to-back-to-back meetings.
I had been fighting my annual cold for a few days and was feeling a bit tender in my body.
I selected a table and ordered Moringa Tea for comfort and to connect me to the strong women who grew it in San Juan Carlos, Mexico.
I poured a steaming cup and thought about the good news they shared this week.
Our global partner, the Moringa Madres, has been growing moringa for more than five years on borrowed land. They recently told us they are now able to purchase those fields at a dramatically reduced cost!
I celebrated their success with a silent toast and got ready for my next meeting.
The person I was waiting for arrived. He sat down and began speaking immediately. He told me about his biggest struggles and that he had waited a long time to share a story with me.
I am not sure if it was because I had been sick, or because I was thinking about the women from Mexico, but my mind began to drift.
So I did my best to listen, I mean really listen: the kind of listening that made me lean in, that took in his gestures, and that held his eyes as he recounted painful decades.
And that’s when I heard it. "What Child Is This?" was playing in the background.
Suddenly it felt like the music was turned up, and I heard the song in harmony with the journey this man had taken.
I have loved this Christmas classic for decades. For the first time I realized I could answer the question it asks:
What child is this, who, laid to rest, on Mary's lap is sleeping?
This child was the man in front of me who was a weary child that needs a mother’s love.
What child is this?
This child is a woman from Mexico who has been working the land of others for years and is being gifted its ownership—a gift as sweet as receiving gold or myrrh.
What child is this?
This child is you when you are feeling sick and you are greeted by love's anthem, with arms that rock you on a cradle of gratitude.
We are the child of God, bearing the love of Christ in us. We are the child who is embraced and then sent back out to love again.
So this year may we, “raise a song on high as Mary sings a lullaby,” to all the children of God she loves as her own.