Merry Christmas from IAFR

As I’m writing this it’s Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas when the Church waits and prepares for the birth of Hope, Jesus. In the midst of the holiday hustle and bustle, this season is intentionally different.

In her Advent devotional, Kate Bowler, author and professor at Duke University, writes “The early Christians called this time a season of longing. The prophet Jeremiah declared, ‘The days are coming’ (Jeremiah 33:14), not ‘the days have arrived.’ Advent is familiar ground for people who know the ache of waiting: for healing, for peace, for things to finally be set right.”

“The Advent ache is hope”

That Advent ache is hope. More than a hopeful longing for better days to come or a sentimental nostalgia, Advent hope is a different sort made of sturdier stuff. It is forged in the difficult realities of the broken world Jesus entered into, the world we still live in today. This is the kind of hope that announced the birth of an unexpected king to an unwed mother and a motley crew of shepherds. This kind of hope is subversive. It shows up in unlikely places to unlikely people and calls us to follow in an upside-down Kingdom marked by love, not might.

This kind of hope is central to the work of IAFR, lived out across a variety of locations, through unique partnerships, and in deep relationship with forcibly displaced people who know intimately the ache of waiting and the deep longing for things to finally be set right.

Hope in Sarajevo

This fall, my husband, Dan, and I witnessed this particular hope in action when we visited IAFR’s team in Sarajevo. Hope looked like a safe and welcoming space where women could laugh and exercise, reclaiming a bit of themselves in the middle of a refugee camp. Hope looked like delight and growth during English classes. Hope looked like meals shared around tables, tenderly prepared by many hands, each infusing the food with their own techniques and flavors, then served and cleaned up together as we tended to a space that had become one of dignity and belonging. Hope looked like worship in many languages and the good news of Jesus shared simply and clearly in word and action. Hope looked like, well, Hope Community.

Thank you for being partners in hope!

As the Board Chair for IAFR, I want you to know that your partnership looks like hope, too. Our world is increasingly unfriendly to forcibly displaced people. These friends find themselves waiting longer, journeying further, and relying on services whose funding is decreasing.

Your partnership is a tangible expression of hope, both to IAFR and to the people they serve. IAFR’s financial partners (over 1,200 so far in 2025) enable us to do the work of bringing hope and helping people survive and recover from forced displacement.

Your support of IAFR, and the Sustaining Fund in particular, provides a hope-filled, solid foundation as we continue building toward the future together. Thank you for being partners in Hope.