I will never forget the day in Baghdad when we had some visitors. They had come to see what it was really like for Christians in Iraq. They were so surprised by how happy the thousands of people were in our congregation. “How can you be so happy when you are surrounded by suicide bombs, mortar rockets and such violence?” One of our young people answered the statement. “You see when you have lost everything, Jesus is all you have got left.

All you have got left is the love of that refugee child. That to us in the Middle East is all that matters this Christmas. The terrorism has got so bad in Iraq that I have had to leave. So I have moved to the other place where I work, Bethlehem. That little town where Jesus first came. Two-thousand years after he first came, he is still everything to the people. He is still everything to our Christians in Iraq and he can still be everything to us. You see when Christmas is over, when you have had all your presents and food, Jesus is all we have got left.

Canon Andrew White, “Happy Christmas from the Middle East” (via writing in the dust)