December 17, 2025

The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness -
    on them light has shined.
Isaiah 9:2
 
“A miracle happened there!” Our family watches a lot of Christmas movies, but we also love holiday episodes of TV. One of our favorites is a beloved episode of E.R. The episode has several storylines, including one in which an elderly patient is brought in from a carjacking. Her granddaughter, an infant, was in the backseat, and is now missing. This old woman, Hanna, bears an unusual tattoo… she’s a survivor. “Of what?” asks one of the nurses. Dr. Green tells him, “The Holocaust.”
 
As Hanna waits for news of her missing granddaughter, Tirzah, and the arrival of her family in the winter stormy weather, she asks Dr. Green to pray with and for her. “You’re a religious man, yes?” He tells her that he’s the son of an agnostic Jew and lapsed Catholic. “I can’t ask you to pray for me,” she says with tears in her eyes, practically begging him for his help. And he clasps her hands and says determinedly, “well, I can try.”
 
Hanna confesses she hasn’t prayed since before she was taken to a concentration camp. She retains her culture, her practices, and faith, but cannot bring herself to speak to God. She needed someone else to pray with her. When her family arrives and the baby is found safe and sound, they play with the dreidel, and she asks what the symbols mean. One of her older grandchildren recites, “A miracle happened there!” Hanna nods and softly tells them, “Our Tirzah is back safely with us, and that is a miracle. And Dr. Green and I said our prayers. And that is a miracle too.”
 
This week, Hanukkah begins. It begins in the midst of violence for the people of the Jewish faith, here and around the world. There is a need for prayers of peace, reconciliation, and an end to violence for and among the community. As people of faith, we are called to say prayers together, to not accept the worst acts of humanity to steal our humanity, hope, and determination to live and offer light, rather than more violence, animosity, and defeat. We must work to build peace, to end war, to heal the deep divides of conflict, suffering, and generational hatred. We do so in the hopes that when people look back at the ways we worked to break these cycles and ask what changed, our children will say, “A miracle happened there.”
 
Prayer
 
Lord, make me someone who clasps hands with the hopeless and prays for, hopes for, and works for miracles. Amen