Every year or two I have a favorite carol: a verse or a line; something that sticks out to me, tangibly enough to grasp and ache for.
This year, it’s one of the lesser-sung verses of Joy to the World.
No more let sin and sorrows grow
Nor thorns infest the ground
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found
Far as the curse is found
Far as, far as the curse is found
As we left for our camping trip on Christmas morning, we drove by Zwe in his new Christmas pajamas.
I find pajamas nearly every year for the youngest kids. There is a shop that has them—fuzzy, fleece pajamas, often in Christmas patterns, for about a $1 a pair. I can’t pass up that deal, particularly in the coldest months of the year when the littles need all the warm clothes they can for their bamboo homes.
Really, our neighbors don’t wear pajamas. Did you know pajamas are a thing of development? I didn’t, or at least I’m not sure I would have identified it that way until we moved here. Wearing them seems to be just another thing to wash by hand; another hassle and thus unnecessary. I’m not sure; I could be wrong. I do know that explaining pajamas to our neighbors for English class has been next to impossible. It isn’t a thing in their world.
The kids just wear them as an outfit. But I buy them anyway.
I think in my mind, it’s like a prayer for them: a hope that someday they’ll have Christmas pajamas. That someday, they’ll celebrate Christmas as a family, and they’ll live a life where they open up a new pair of pajamas on Christmas Eve.
In just one picture of our community, even a beautiful one like this, there is so much story for us. We know the stories these families hold, at least in the past eight years. We know when Zwe got here to Mae Sot, when he moved in with his grandparents and cousins. We remember picking him up across town with a small bag of things, an infant then.
All the families, all the stories: they all carry loss. Some more than others, but all of them carry the curse, the brokenness of sin and sorrows.
And yet, for this community in particular, we are hoping for His blessings to flow through. We are hoping for HIs goodness to stretch as far as the curse in found in every household, every family, and every story. We hope for Christmas to be celebrated, for families to be whole, and perhaps someday for there to be Christmas pajamas waiting under a tree.