The love of Jesus is for everybody

In his delightful work, The One Year Book of Amazing Stories, Dr. Robert Peterson writes about an unusual friendship he developed with two interesting and remarkable ladies while he was a pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Wanda and Lucille looked like twins but were in fact mother and daughter. Both were grossly overweight and between them, had fewer than eight teeth. Their round faces were always caked with heavy makeup and both had neon orange hair. One day while lugging garbage bags containing all their possessions past Peterson’s church, they decided it was a good place to “get religion.”

The two immediately loved their new pastor. He wrote, “They would waddle up, throw their pudgy arms around me and loudly proclaim, ‘He’s our pastor.’ One night I reluctantly went to their little house for dinner. They sat me on a wooden crate at a card table surrounded by stray cats and décor rescued from a junk heap. We ate fast-food fried chicken, fruit cocktail straight out of a can, and Wonder Bread served on worn plastic plates.”

In later years, the pastor would occasionally share that someone needed a place to stay and the two were always among the first to volunteer their three-room shack. Nearly every week, they would invite Peterson to their house to share Jesus’ love with a friend. Over the years, many who knew them began a personal journey of faith in that home.

Eventually, Wanda and Lucille left Tulsa on a Greyhound bus. Dr. Peterson heard from them only once afterward. In the years following their departure the pastor often pondered their simple sincere faith and ultimately came to realize that “had Jesus come to Tulsa, Wanda and Lucille would have bullied their way past everyone to be first to host him.”

Scripture describes the first Christmas with these simple words about Mary, “She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.” (Luke 2:7, NLT) It is amazing that the King of the Universe was born in a barn because there was no room for him.

Had Wanda and Lucille been in Bethlehem that first Christmas night they would have opened their simple home to the newborn baby in an instant. As it was, the baby’s first visitors were neither religious leaders nor the wise men described in Matthew 2, but “blue-collar” shepherds who heard about Jesus’ birth from an angelic choir.

The hope that Jesus brought to the shepherds, as well as to the Wanda’s and Lucille’s of the world, demonstrates that he loves even the least among us. And that is why every person can celebrate the wonder of Christmas every year.

Tim Richards grew up in Fairdealing and previously served as associate pastor of Pilgrim’s Rest Church there. He currently serves as a pastor on the staff of Concord Church in South County St. Louis.