Prayers! Pray for all the families all over the world experiencing any type of grief in this time of year. Pray that God will use this day to bring our students and staff closer to Him. Continue praying for Yeisson Cotzojay as he continues his battle with leukemia.
Praises! We thank God for sending His Son to take on flesh in order to complete the Father’s plan for all of us. We are thankful for each and every one of you who kept the Morning Glory Story alive this year. We thank God for all the opportunities we had to share His name.
Broken Angels By Lori Nij Director of Morning Glory Christian Academy
Christmas time is my favorite time of the year. The colored lights, the brightly decorated trees, the air of expectation, and the promise of hope appeal to the child that lives on in my heart. I love to watch the inevitable Christmas movies and could listen to Christmas Carols play on endless loop. I never tire of The Christmas Story, The Miracle on 34th street, A Wonderful Life or Dickens’ timeless Christmas Carol. The story of the baby in a manger, shepherds, and wise men never grow old. The wonder of Emmanuel, God born among us still brings tears to my eyes and hope to my weary heart. And perhaps my personal favorite: the story of an angel speaking to a virgin and then to simple shepherds and then the heavenly host breaking out in joyous praise on a clear winter night.
I have always been fascinated by the concept of angels; God’s heavenly messengers who walk among us bringing hope, providing protection, and revealing to man the word and will of God. Throughout the Old Testament the Scripture of God speaks about angels: the angel of the Lord that goes before, guiding and leading, the angel that camps around, protecting and guarding, the angel that brings a message from God, the angel that fights the spiritual battles and one of my favorite scriptures of all time, “the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them.” Years ago, as a Christmas gift, Queno gave me a beautiful musical angel that played one of my all time favorite Christmas hymns, Angels we Have Heard on High. Over the years my collection has grown, gifts from my children, gifts from grateful parents and students. There is the beautiful red velvet and white fur Christmas angel that spent many a year atop our family Christmas tree, now worn with time, the white fur hopelessly darkened by dust and time, the precious moment snow globe angel brought as a gift from one of my countless lost children who for a moment in time was one of my kids, a young man left in the care of an older sister, lonely for a mom and for a dream. Comic angels, classic angels, and childish angel figurines adorn my living room shelves.
The ceramic and clay figurines that sit upon a shelf in my living room are just reminders and shadows of the angels that have touched my life. Symbols of love and moments gone by, ever remembered, ever treasured.
There was the voice of the unseen angel in my car that late night on a mountain road in the midst of Oaxaca instructing me, “Go to the left lane Lori” and as I instinctively obeyed we realized that the dark spot in the right lane ahead of me was really a space where the entire lane had washed away down the mountain cliff; he angels who, that same night pushed my car as I drove for three hours on an empty tank of gas.
Years later, angels sang to me on a sleepless night as I prayed fervently for the “poor woman who was sure to die in surgery the next morning” that the nurses talked about the night before Tabitha´s birth, never realizing that I was the “poor woman.” The next morning in surgery an angel wrote on the ceiling and read the words into my heart when the pain was more than I could humanly bear. “The Lord is my help in times of trouble, He is my guard and my shield. I will lift my eyes to the hills from whence comes my help.” I will never forget the shocked look on the anesthesiologist’s face when I told him to shut up cause I was listening to God.
Then, there was the lonely cold night sitting on a wooden bench in a strange country holding my baby in my arms as I diligently pushed fluid into her dying body with a syringe, terrified and alone as never before. Out of nowhere a Guatemalan grandmother patted my hand, prayed with me and told me it would be okay. An angel? I will never know but she spoke hope and peace into my frightened weary heart giving me strength that I never knew I possessed.
A lifetime later on my darkest day, a day when I had lost all hope, a rattletrap van pulled up to my front door and out piled a group of messengers who sang Southern gospel over me, prayed for me, and brought me a message of hope. This was s group who, for just a minute, made me feel like I was home singing four-part harmony around the piano on Sunday night after church. A potbellied minister with the deepest southern accent that took me back home wrapped his arms around me and my broken heart and promised that: “God had heard my prayers and in His time I would see His glory.” The same group of angels that ministered in the prison to my husband and all the men searching for hope and light then walked through the closed gate and past the prison guards while my six-year-old son watched.
And on that night lying in a hospital bed, my body wrecked with pain and shame, the night when I gave up, the night when all fight was gone, I begged God to take me home. And again an angel came and whispered hope into my broken heart. “Just give up Lori, stop fighting, let God be God. It is finally time, He has heard your cry and it´s your turn for a miracle.” That night the healing began, my own miracle was born, and God once again gave me a new life. It was this hope, this promise that carried me through the lonely days far from home and family as my body began to cleanse and heal. It was the angel´s song whispered through the words of friends, the healing touch of human angels as they massaged my hurting muscles and limbs, it was the encouragement of children´s prayers and my families steady faith that brought me through.
Yesterday I was given a gift; a beautiful ceramic angel to add to my collection. Yet this angel was different, her wing had been broken somehow. As I held the pieces in my hand and carefully glued them back together, I thought how like that I am. Broken and glued back together, never perfect but strangely perfectly imperfect. I am astonished that God would find beauty and worth in such brokenness. As they apologized for giving me a broken gift, I looked past the broken wing and saw the beauty. We come broken and ruined but God take the pieces and makes beauty.
More than anything that is the message of Christmas. That message is God´s grace in the gift of a child to a broken and sinful world; Grace that forgives and mends, grace that brings us home to the Father, grace that makes us whole again, broken children glued together with love and forgiveness. This is the message from Morning Glory this Christmas. No matter how broken your life, how broken your heart, your home, your finances, Christ has the answer. No matter how broken our world, Christ sits on the throne and the battle has been won. From afar the angel on my shelf looks perfect, mended and whole. Yet if you look closely the crack is there, barely visible but always present. Broken yet whole, mended and healed. No wonder the angels sang that night so long ago. Perfectly imperfect. God-with-us born in a humble stable, a simple peasant girl, a carpenter, shepherds and sheep, perfectly imperfect.
“A place where laughter and love abound and children play and learn.“
This is my Christmas prayer for you. May God-with-us, the Prince of Peace ,touch your life and your home with His healing touch, May He mend your heart, your spirit, your body, your relationships and most of all heal you. May He bring you the gift of hope and send His angels to watch over you, minister to you, protect you and most of touch your broken wings and put the pieces together to form the very perfectly imperfect you. Thank you for being an angel in my life. Thank you for your gift of hope to my brown eyed kids. And as you search for the perfect gift, the perfect moment, the perfect feeling, please take time for the broken angels who walk among us.
And in this New Year, please remember Morning Glory, a place where broken children are made whole, a place where Christ brings hope. A place where angels sing, where God reigns and the veil between heaven and earth grows thin. A place where laughter and love abound and children play and learn. Remember that you are a part of the story, the ever never ending, perfectly imperfect Morning Glory Story.
