Week 4 Love
Sometimes Having a Baby Is Resistance to Empire
Bethlehem Is Not a Storybook: An Advent Journey Toward Peace
The Birth of Love
“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7
We tell the Christmas story as if it were weightless, but it is rooted in a body, a road, and a birth. Mary carried a child across the stony Judean hills. The route from Nazareth to Bethlehem bends down through the Jordan Valley, then climbs more than three thousand feet in twenty stubborn miles. Even with a donkey, it was exhausting. Even with faith, it was frightening.
Luke is spare: “While they were there, the time came…” No emergency dash to a stable, no dramatized chaos, just the slow arrival of pain and promise. The guest room was already full. A family made space in the lower level, likely a cave for animals, and there, Mary labored.
And there, in that shelter carved into the earth, Love came down to us. The Messiah was born.
Luke tells us little more. But history and early tradition invite us to wonder about the details. Mary was a young Jewish woman giving birth far from home. Though Joseph was at her side, he may have lacked the knowledge and means to assist her fully. Yet Bethlehem was a village, a tight-knit community. It is highly likely that other women were near. Among them would have been midwives, women trusted and known for their care, prayer, and practiced hands.
The Mishnah and Talmud mention midwives and their tools, small knives for cutting the cord, salt to rub on the baby’s skin (echoed in Ezekiel 16:4), swaddling bands, warm water, olive oil, and soft words. These women were not merely helpers; they were spiritual attendants. They prayed, they guided, they whispered strength into exhausted mothers.
Perhaps such a woman came to Mary’s aid. Perhaps she heard the groans and came quickly. She would have washed Mary’s feet, wiped her brow, coached her breathing. And when the child came, she would have caught him, bathed him, rubbed his skin with oil, wrapped him in cloths, and laid him gently in the manger.
And maybe she paused. Maybe she knew something was different.
We don’t know her name. But perhaps she was the first outsider to hold Emmanuel, God with us, the touch of human Love meeting divine Love.
Behind Luke’s single sentence, “She gave birth to her firstborn son…” is a world of exhaustion, care, and mystery. God came to us through labor and delivery, through the blood and breath of birth, through the warm hands of a woman shaped by years of faithful service.
The world Jesus entered was not passive. It was counting, taxing, enforcing. And yet God chose this very moment to reveal His power through weakness. He chose the poor, not the powerful, pain, not privilege, a frightened young woman, not a king’s court. Even under empire, heaven sent its messengers to declare who truly reigns.
That choosing continues even now in Bethlehem. Love continues to choose the humble, those the world continues to overlook.
Listening in Bethlehem
If you are willing to listen to a Palestinian, you will be invited in for coffee.
Noora sat down with Syed and me. Syed poured more coffee. I could tell Noora was there to comfort him, to sit quietly with him in his grief. She was contemplative, soft-spoken. A beautiful young woman with baby cheeks, a soft smile, and a cheerful pink hijab.
I told her I admired her dress, a long, cream-colored robe adorned with pink and blue flowers, like a garden of life climbing up from the hem. Her presence was life-giving, an ordinary act of love in a land that knows too much loss.
Syed, almost shamefully, told her that he had spoken to me about Sarah. Noora clucked softly with disapproval.
I responded gently, “Syed is a good father,” wanting Noora to know that I, too, was offering him comfort. In Palestinian culture, grief is rarely private. It is shared, carried together, softened through the presence of others.
There was no impropriety in that exchange, only compassion. Grief, after all, is Love without an object. And Love, when redirected, becomes care. In that moment, our shared mourning became a small act of healing, a way of honoring what was lost by tending to what remains.
After visiting for a few minutes, Noora offered to take me to find a salon for a haircut.
The first shop, near her office, was closed. So she took me inside her own workplace. She was a medical records secretary for a fertility doctor. Proudly, she showed me a bulletin board filled with photos of babies the doctor had helped bring into the world.
There were many triplets and even one set of quintuplets, all healthy.
She explained that many couples in the area struggle with infertility because of environmental pollution.
“Our water has many bad things in it,” she said.
She described a region outside Hebron where people suffer from high rates of infertility and cancer.
“The land has been poisoned,” she said. “They believe nuclear waste has been dumped there.”
Hannah pointed to a photograph of a little girl, an angel with golden curls and a radiant face, holding a toy.
Her smile faded as she said, very seriously, “This child was perfectly healthy. The doctors at Hadassah Hospital said she would be born with severe defects. They told the parents to abort the baby.”
She paused. “They came to Bethlehem, to my doctor. He ran the tests and said, ‘No. There is nothing wrong with your child.’”
My breath caught in my chest as I looked into her serious eyes. When I finally exhaled, it came out with my sorrow.
“That’s evil,” I said.
Hannah nodded in agreement, then pointed to several more pictures. “And this one. And this one. And this one. The same story.”
I felt the weight of what she was telling me. The enormity of this crime. Systematic deception. Medical terrorism, perpetrated under the authority of a highly respected healthcare system.
She must be very careful with this knowledge. If she were to criticize Israel openly, the Palestinian Authority itself could imprison her.
Now I understood the look in her eyes, that steady, serious gaze. It was not only grief or burden. It was defiance.
What she shared with me was a deep act of trust, an act of resistance, an act of Love.
Later, I shared this story with friends in Beit Sahour. Elham’s eyes grew wide. She gestured to her youngest son, nodding, the pitch of her voice rising.
“Yes! Yes! This happened to us too! Fadi! My Fadi, my youngest son! They said that he would be deformed, that I should abort him.”
She shook her head with grief.
“That must have been so frightening?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, but we trusted God. And Fadi is beautiful, and perfect. It was all a lie. They do this to us.”
In the days of Rome, the empire counted people to tax and control them, disrupting homes, uprooting families, and managing movements for imperial gain. Today, empire still reaches deep into the family.
But in Bethlehem, there are still women who believe in life. Still doctors who tell the truth. Still mothers who trust that what is growing inside them is sacred.
Sometimes, having a baby is resistance to the empire.
An excerpt from the book, “Bethlehem is not a Storybook, Learning to Listen: A Journey Toward Peace” by Lani Lanchester to be published in 2026.
Advent Reflection Questions
- Where have I allowed fear, ideology, or comfort to narrow my compassion?
- What would it look like to love as Jesus did across boundaries of belief, race, and circumstance until everyone is treated as beloved of God?
- How can I bear witness to the sacredness of life without judgment or control?
Acts of Love Practices for the Fourth Week of Advent
- Be a modern midwife. Offer tangible support to an expectant family (a meal train, childcare for siblings, rides to appointments). Let your help say: you are not alone.
- Honor informed hope. If a friend receives frightening prenatal news, encourage a second opinion and offer to go with them. Pray the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55) before the appointment.
- Protect the springs. Honor Mary’s courage this Advent by learning how to bring clean water and hope to families in Palestine. Make your gift in honor of Mary and the unnamed midwives.
Closing Reflection
Love does not choose sides. It chooses people. It holds the child, the mother, the stranger, the enemy all with the same steady gaze. In Bethlehem, God’s Love took on flesh not to win arguments, but to dwell among the vulnerable. May we do the same.
