I am reminded of a story a friend of mine once told me. It was rush hour on a hot-summer Friday afternoon, on a local road that fed into a major federal highway. Commuters were rushing hoping to beat the traffic headed down the shore. On a cross lane stood a blind man, who because he slept off in the bus, passed his usual stop. Now he was in an unfamiliar territory. He stood there and repetitiously called out: “please someone help me crossover”. People were so tuned into their own need to get to where they were going that they either did not hear the plea of the blind man or they did not care about his call for help. My friend came by and said, “Yes, I will help you crossover”. He went on to walk the blind man through the busy street as some motorists honked their horn, out of impatience, as though they couldn’t see the need that was being fulfilled. It took them sometime to cross over to the other side. He then got into another bus with the blind man, and took him to the bus stop that he had missed and was familiar with its environment. The blind man was now able to get on his way and continued his journey.
This seems to me to be what Christmas is all about; God coming down to us in human form to help us crossover; to help us crossover from darkness into light; from sin to redemption, from death to resurrection and from condemnation to salvation. The true spirit of Christmas, therefore, lies in helping someone crossover. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child. For someone out there, someone who needs to crossover, I am that village. As we prepare for Christmas, let us become the bridge between failure and success, between hopelessness and aspiration, between giving up and being an overcomer, between starvation and having something to eat, between disempowerment and much empowerment, between illiteracy and literacy etc.
Let us become “God with us” for someone in this life. May the good Lord grant us the grace for this action, Amen!
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