Christmas Blessings, From LAMA to ALL

Merry Christmas, LAMA Family!

Even though the holiday is not for a few more days, this is the last newsletter you will receive before then, and we wanted to take a moment to wish you and yours a hearty thanks and a blessed Christmas.

2023 has been a big year for LAMA. Several of our advocacy efforts have been successful, including funding for the Double Up Food Bucks Arizona Bill, and the expansion of Mesa’s Off The Streets Program. We have grown and bolstered our community; our GCS Hunger Leaders Network continues to grow together, supporting each other in their shared mission to meet hunger wherever they find it. We have visited and worked with several new congregations and welcomed new LAMA Liaisons. Lutheran Day at the Legislature and the LAMA Summit both had record participation. We even added yours truly, ELCA World Hunger’s Hunger Advocacy Fellow, to the team. All of our good work this year has been because of YOU! Our office exists to be a resource to help Lutherans engage in the call to advocacy, and this year, our community took that call further than ever before. A community of such dedicated, diligent, loving folks is the best Christmas present we could ever get.

As we prepare to do it all again in 2024, I invite you to take a moment to consider the Nativity through the lens of our advocacy. Whether or not you grew up with religious Christmas celebrations, we are all familiar with the dioramas of the stable, with the babe in the manger, his kneeling parents, and the triumphant angels. In the Nativity we see a moment of peace and joy, suspended in the midst of a much larger story.

This Christmas, I ask us all to remember who these people at the Nativity are. Mary is a young, unwed mother, and Joseph is not an educated man, but one who works with his hands. Soon after this miraculous birth, Mary, Joseph, and the baby Christ will become refugees. The shepherds are in from the fields where they labor, and the Magi have traveled from lands afar to see the gift of the Christ Child. The angels cried to the shepherds, “Be not afraid!” and to us they say, “Be not afraid of what you are not used to!” The first Christmas brought together people from very different walks of life, and invited them to share the Love incarnate that they had been gifted. This Christmas, remember those who need you—the young, the delicate, the refugees, the field laborers, and the holy men from far away lands. This Christmas, I invite all of us to open our hearts, not just to Christ, but to each other.

Thank you for your advocacy and engagement this year. As we work toward a world that provides justice and peace for all, people like you are invaluable. Thank you for doing the good and necessary work to get us there.

With Love,

Autumn Byars

Hunger Advocacy Fellow