NEIGHBORHOOD

This quilt, featured at our county fair this fall, prompted me to stop and reflect on so much housing crunched together. I thought of cities where I'd lived or visited. Some had tucked-tight yet immaculate historic row townhouses. Others, shabby slum apartment buildings. I'll never forget sitting in a worn seat on a clattering elevated train in downtown Chicago as it passed derelict apartment buildings splattered with graffiti. I had no desire to get off at the next stop and tour the area!

Yet people lived there, likely amidst pain, poverty and crime. I was surprised recently, in reading a biography of prolific blind hymn-lyric writer Fanny Crosby (1820-1915), to learn that she lived in such housing in a New York slum. Nearby were neighborhoods known by such unsavory names as “Hell's Kitchen.” She couldn't see the crumbling housing, of course, but had chosen to live there so that she would be within walking distance of rescue missions where she could talk to people about Jesus.

It wasn't that she didn't have enough money for a better place to live. But she chose to direct royalties from her 8,000-some hymn lyrics to ministries for those in need. The Lord saw her generosity, and also provided her practical needs. One of her faithful friends was a well-to-do Christian lady who, I'm sure, helped Fanny with things like food and clothing. Remember, Fanny was blind! Pictures show her dressed in all black with tiny black spectacles covering her eyes, blinded in infancy from a quack medicine. Fashion didn't mean much to her. Her passion was writing Christian poetry.

For some reason, her story came to mind as I recalled how the late Eugene Peterson, in his scripture paraphrase called “The Message,” expressed John 1:14: “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” The KJV puts it: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” And NIV: “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us.”

“The neighborhood.” The term comes with all sorts of connotations today. Some have mansions with views, lovely yards...and doors and windows buttressed with alarms, multiple locks, and security cameras. Others consist of crammed, dirty dwellings with few safety measures.

The one Jesus entered was the latter. His newborn cradle was a feeding trough; the floor, manure and straw. He grew up in a family with its own humble home, but itinerant ministry meant sleeping outdoors or as someone's guest on a borrowed cot or ledge. No security men with walkies talkies or karate skills surrounded Him as He became famous, just ordinary fishermen and tax collectors who risked all to follow Him.

He left the splendor of Heaven...and moved into earth's humble neighborhoods. Back to the quilt—could this be another symbol of Christmas? Of the One who moved into “the neighborhood” on planet earth with the most humble beginning possible?

My son and daughter, now parents themselves, have children who watch the reruns of the late children's show “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.” His signature song included the line, “Won't you be my neighbor?” He taught his viewers about his neighbors' occupations. He greeted the mailman with special enthusiasm. The tone of his show was “kindness.”

Maybe that's the key to seeing this quilt as a Christmas symbol. For another scripture about “God moving into the neighborhood” goes like this: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5). He moved into earth's sin-stained neighborhoods to gift us with saving grace and kindness. And that's a Christmas “story” that can be told all year around.