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The other night I was coming home late. I go to night church and often by the time we let out, the buses have stopped running. So I, along with a few friends who live in my direction, share a taxi home. About halfway home, after dropping off our first friend, we were stopped at a large intersection. Frequently at these intersections, beggars approach the taxi. And this night, this very common thing happened. A woman came up to the car, shaking her home made percussion instrument (bottle caps nailed to a small piece of wood).

Yet this interaction was not to be a normal one. As I turned to look at the woman, I realized...she is my neighbor, Emily. More than that, she is my friend! I told this to the girl nearest the window and she rolled it down.  Now Emily could see us as well and we immediately launched into chatting about going to the beach together sometime soon as she had missed out on going swimming with several of the neighbors and I earlier that day.

As red lights don't last long, we said our parting greetings and were on our way. As we drove off, my friend, who was sitting in a position to more easily see the taxi driver, noted that he was looking confused. I guess he had never seen an interaction like that. So we explained that the woman was a neighbor and friend of mine. And while I couldn't see his face, I could hear him say under his breath "unbelievable".

And I am reminded again of how odd the upside down kingdom of God is.

One of the things I have been learning a lot about over this past year has been about grace. A few weeks back, I was listening to a podcast sermon talking about grace and how it wasn't fair (Fairness being something which we Americans are very fond of). The speaker shared a story from one of his overseas trips when he had been treated to a lavish banquet by a very poor family and later, when he really understood just HOW much the celebration had cost his host, he started to think of ways to repay the generosity.

Another man from the host culture found out about this plan and told him "Don't you dare defame the gift he has given to you! Suffer the Kindness!"

Emily, my friend who approached the taxi, is a very generous woman. In the week leading up to this interaction she had shared food with me more than once and had even given me a bracelet. After realizing what she does for a living, realizing that everything she generously gives to me comes from having to put herself in a humbling position, I found it harder to accept her generosity. But then I hear those words echoing in my head... Suffer the Kindness. Learn about grace. Gifts that are given out of love and not in the expectation of being repaid. And in learning to accept grace from Emily, I learn a bit more about accepting grace from God as well.

A week or so after this happened, I talked about the taxi interaction to my teammate Lara and as she was praying for me, she said she got an image of that event but instead of Emily approaching the taxi, it was me, coming as a beggar and inside the taxi was Jesus who welcomed me. For that is what he does.

He takes beggars like me and calls us his friends.

I pray that this advent season, your awareness of your own poverty will make you all the more thankful for the gift we have all been given.

[Written by a member of the Jakarta team.  Names have been changed for security reasons.]