Page 19 - 2026 October / November Newsletter

Page 19

The season of
Advent reminds
us of God’s
choice to enter
into human
experience in a
physical way, by
sending Jesus.
Jesus has some
borders to cross
in order to
“become flesh
and live among
us,” as John’s
Gospel tells us.
Because of the
tangled mess we
have created with
our desire to
fence off the
world, Jesus must
continually
challenge and
even cross our
hurtful attempts
to section off this
from that, and us

Ilse is going to love feast, a from them. Yet
special event at her rightly ordered
grandmother’s church. But borders, laid
she’s annoyed because her gently by our
big sister, Lina, always gets Creator, can
to do everything first. This bring us life.
is a story of sisters—and Advent is an
also a dad who understands invitation to
and a church that widens witness again the
its circle.
For the story in this way Jesus
children’s picture book, navigates the
writer Gimbiya Kettering landscape of our
draws on her experience human division,
growing up in the Church tearing down the
of the Brethren, her dividing walls and
sensitivity as the mother of calling us back to
two girls, and her nuanced a rightly ordered
understanding of a relationship with
multiracial family finding him.
meaning in the traditions of
faith. Ages 4-8.