BEING HUMAN

Day 13, 13 December 2024, the 1024th day of the full-scale war.

As millions of Ukrainians seek shelter from missiles and war, the ancient words about no room echo with fresh pain. When bomb shelters fill past capacity, when refugee centers reach their limits, when European countries begin restricting their possibilities, we confront an old human paradox. Unprecedented numbers of Ukrainians have found welcome abroad, 7.7 million scattered across the world, close to a quarter of our population, with 5.3 million in EU countries alone, and this war exposes deeper questions about how selective human compassion can be.

How do we process that? Societies that welcome Ukrainians often go on turning away people of a different religion or a different skin color in their own hour of need. And I have to acknowledge our own history, since before this war Ukraine was not notably inclusive in its refugee assistance. Now, with 3.7 million internally displaced people looking for shelter in safer regions inside the country, we face the irony of becoming a nation of refugees after once restricting refuge to others.

I pray this experience can change us. Having known both rejection and welcome, exclusion and embrace, might we come out of this war with a deeper understanding of displacement? Can our suffering teach us to extend mercy and not only to receive it? Those ancient words challenge us to become people who make room for others, and not only to find shelter for ourselves.

“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7, NKJV).

Luke presents the problem with stark simplicity. Bethlehem, swollen with census travelers and strangers, could find no space for a woman in labor. The closure of the inn was passive indifference rather than active hostility, that subtle evil which permits suffering while maintaining respectability. Perhaps the innkeeper even felt justified: rules are rules, capacity is capacity, what can one person do?

The story finds tragic echoes in our present reality, which some still delicately call a crisis or a situation, avoiding the stark truth of a war. Like Mary and Joseph seeking shelter, millions of Ukrainians navigate labyrinthine bureaucracies, knock on foreign doors, and face the cold mathematics of quotas and capacity limits. Some find welcome, as Mary and Joseph found their stable. Others hear those ancient words dressed in modern diplomatic language: no further possibilities, quota limits reached, temporary suspension of applications.

The stable that sheltered Jesus mirrors today’s improvised sanctuaries: overcrowded subway stations during air raids, basement shelters converted from storage rooms, abandoned buildings turned into temporary homes, even cattle barns repurposed as refugee centers. These unlikely spaces become holy ground, as that manger did, through their life-preserving purpose rather than through any architectural grandeur.

The theological implications run deeper still. God chose to enter human history through a double rejection, first with no room in Bethlehem, and then in the ultimate rejection at Calvary. This was part of God’s intentional identification with the excluded rather than a divine accommodation to human failure. Making that phrase part of the story of salvation reveals a profound truth: divine presence often manifests most powerfully in spaces of rejection and displacement.

The manger was no plan B but part of the purpose, showing how God’s presence deliberately inhabits places where a society has no room for them, and eventually for us. And this raises a real question for us now: what constitutes our true place of worship, a shelter or a church? The answer emerges through experience, since both become sacred when they serve a divine purpose. A bomb shelter where people pray together during an air raid becomes as holy as a cathedral. Do you hear that? As holy as a cathedral. A church basement storing humanitarian aid becomes as sacred as its altar. Do you hear? As sacred as the altar. The God who chose a stable for His entrance into human history goes on manifesting His presence in unexpected spaces of refuge and rejection.

Perhaps “no room” is never really about capacity but about priorities, echoing through history in other forms of denial: no time to help, no resources to share, no strength to care, no interest in someone else’s suffering. Like that inn which had no room for its Savior, we craft sophisticated excuses for our exclusions, citing limited resources, emotional fatigue, compassion burnout, or simply the overwhelming scale of need.

And the stable teaches a different response, since it offered what it had rather than what it lacked. What it had, not what it lacked. No bed? Here is clean straw. No privacy? Here is a quiet corner. No warmth? Here is shelter from the wind. No resources? Here is a simple space. This mirrors our own wartime reality, where the poorest communities often share most generously, where people with nothing to give somehow find something to share, and where no room becomes enough room through the creativity of love.

May we be found among those who, like that stable, offer whatever we have, whether space or time or resources or simply presence, trusting that God often arrives through the very people for whom a society claims to have no room, no budget, no capacity. In God’s economy it is the readiness of our hearts rather than the abundance of our resources that creates space for divine presence. Sometimes the fullest worship happens in the emptiest places, and the richest giving comes from the poorest hands.

Prince of Peace, who chose to enter human history through rejection, transform the closed doors of our hearts into spaces of welcome. When we are tempted to say no time, no strength, no resources, remind us of a stable that offered what little it had. When our churches and our homes feel stretched past capacity, grant us the creativity to make room anyway. When compassion fatigue tempts us to turn away, help us remember that in welcoming those for whom society has no room, we welcome You. Make us people who never say we have nothing to offer, but always ask what we can share. For You still come to us through those whom society excludes, and Your presence still sanctifies the humblest spaces where love makes room. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord of those for whom there was no room. Amen.