For the first seven years of my childhood, my family lived in government-subsidized housing in an urban part of Jackson, Mississippi. You could see the weathered gray vinyl siding and rust-red accent panels of our low-rise apartment building from US Highway 80. The walls of our small four-bedroom apartment were a flat beige, and our windows overlooked a school and a Service Merchandise store.
Day after day, my three siblings and I watched our parents work two jobs, sometimes three, so that our family could keep the lights on. Our shared struggles and misfortunes created a peculiar sense of solidarity among our tight-knit community, even as we each longed to find our place in the wider world.
One memory in particular captures my desire for belonging in those early years: My Uncle Johnny would promise my siblings and me, “I’ll come pick you all up and take you somewhere fun,” but he would never show up. I’d wait at the smudged screen door, watching every car that passed, my stomach sinking with each one that wasn’t his. After a while, I would realize he wasn’t coming. So I’d slip off my shoes, go back inside the house, and turn on the cartoons to drown out the noise of my disappointment.
This kind of hope-deferred waiting isn’t unique to me. It’s what many of us experience in a world that overpromises and underdelivers. We wait. We hope. We believe a promise fulfilled will come and bring us a different life, one where we are always welcomed. But so often the world never shows up in the way we want.
This is what makes the story of Christmas so radically audacious: Only God keeps his promise to come to us, to welcome us into his plan. Only his humble arrival is the fulfillment of every yearning the world could never satisfy. Only in this act of divine hospitality do we find where we truly belong.
Yet at Christmas we might hear the story of God coming to us and remain unmoved, forgetting that in Christ, God extends to us the most extraordinary act of divine welcome this world has ever known.
Make Faith Plausible Again
The scandal of Advent is not only in the fact that Christ came but also in the people he came for and the way he arrived. The creator of the universe chose to become a holy temple of flesh, entering his creation through the womb of a teenage girl of lowly means. God chose the very space marked by the pronouncement of judgment (Gen. 3:16) to become the birthplace and proclamation of redemption (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:35).
Divine hospitality begins not in places of lofty grandeur but in the overlooked margins—the places society often deems unworthy of our attention. It’s here I have come to understand what God’s welcome looks like for a girl in the projects looking to belong: extravagant.
It is good news for us that God’s welcome is neither abstract nor distant. It is as real and tangible as his body, which held space in a mother’s womb. Advent invites us to remember that God more than makes room for his people; he entered our world and dwelt intimately among us (John 1:14). In Jesus’ incarnation, divine hospitality takes on flesh, proving the promise of the prophet Isaiah to be true: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone” (Isa. 9:2).
In his coming, God not only draws near to us but also receives the humble welcome of those who open their hearts to him (Phil. 2:6–8). This is the beautiful exchange at the heart of Advent: God welcomes us so that we might welcome him and, in turn, one another.
Yet how easily we can make the season of Advent a declaration of Christ’s presence without his priorities, a celebration of the blessings of God’s kingdom without the ways of the King: humility, holiness, and the honoring of others. To rejoice in Christ’s coming while neglecting his calling is to miss the very purpose of his arrival.
A true acknowledgment of Advent moves us toward a celebration that expresses itself in service. Many find themselves waiting for the promise of hope and belonging to be fulfilled this year, whether they have lost jobs, have been displaced, or are unwelcome in the spaces that once felt like home.
Into that ache of belonging, Paul’s words in Romans offer a clear invitation that reflects Christ’s hospitality toward humanity:
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, so that the promises made to the patriarchs might be confirmed and, moreover, that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. (15:7–9)
The greatest testimony the world will notice is not the decorations hung on our mantels but the visible outworking of God’s arrival beyond the manger into our very lives. This is the captivating and scandalous beauty Advent was always meant to display.
When we invite someone into our lives, whether that person comes from the margins of society (where Jesus first arrived) or from a place the world celebrates, our togetherness is rooted in the awareness that, because God came close to us on earth, we can come close to God and one another.
If the Incarnation is the ultimate act of divine hospitality, then the church becomes the host, embodying the welcome of Christ far and wide. Advent is an opportunity to participate in God’s redemptive welcome.
All I Want for Christmas Is a Time Machine
Though I did not have the words as a child to articulate it fully, my community in the projects drew together because of shared need. Even with the financial constraints surrounding us, we had one of the most welcoming communities I’ve ever known. We welcomed others into our lives and were welcomed into theirs.
As children of God, we come together in recognition of our emptiness, our struggle, our communal need for the grace only God can give. The incarnation of our Savior means that we are no longer left waiting at the door for a promise that is never fulfilled. God came near, bringing with him the kind of welcome we long for but rarely find in this world.
Advent reminds us that divine hospitality begins with God making room for us in Christ. It continues as we make room for God and mirror the scandalous grace of Bethlehem.
Oghosa Iyamu is the author of the six-week Bible study Forever Welcomed, which traces God’s impartial love throughout the grand narrative of Scripture.
