Canada is changing. Have you noticed that?
Two treasures—one hidden, another shared. Which one will change lives?
In 2016 we admitted 46,000 refugees.
In 2017, an additional 32,000 plus asylum seekers crossed our borders.
That’s a lot of new faces.
How will we choose to respond?
Take Gailynn MacDonald Grant.
Gai’s church spent a year raising funds to sponsor Amira and Nazir Rahal to come from Syria to Hum Harbour, Nova Scotia. It was a big commitment for such a small community.
You’d think everyone would be delighted.
No.
The first time Gai saw a villager mistreat Amira she was too shocked to act. And when she finally met Amira face to face she was almost too uncomfortable to speak.
She had to speak, though. Gai couldn’t let her initial reaction define her.
She took a risk. Not knowing what to say, or how she’d be received, she stepped through her fear into relationship.
In the fictional world of Hum Harbour, Gai’s relationships always lead to mystery. This time it’s a “Hum Harbour Christmas Mystery” and a treasure that will change Gai and Amira forever.
It could change you and me.
Like Gai, how we respond to the situations around us define who we are. We can face Canada’s influx of refugees and asylum seekers with anger and fear, or with compassion and care. We can build relationship bridges, not walls, and embrace opportunities to share the blessings we take for granted. Like peace and security.
This Christmas season, I encourage you, take the true message of Christmas, God with us, to new Canadians and old. Let people like Amira and Nazir know the joy of changed hearts, not just changed homes.
Be changed yourself.
Jayne E. Self is an award-winning author whose Sea Glass Mysteries, Murder in Hum Harbour and Death of a Highland Heavyweight, both won The Word Awards. She is also a former director of Write Canada. A pastor’s wife, mom, and grandma, Jayne now resides in Strathroy, Ontario, with her husband. Visit her website, “Where Faith and Mystery Converge.”
www.jayneself.com
Here’s what I said when I shared this on FB. “I’m a mystery appreciator. Jayne’s mystery characters are believable and I’ve enjoyed the humour scattered throughout her books. In the Christmas with Hot Apple Cider anthology, you get the gift of an entire mystery story (necessarily less complicated than a full book) set in her familiar Hum Harbour Canada, as part of the book’s bagful of gifts. Her inside story provides some of her thinking behind the story. Well worth the read.”