The Year the Gifts Were Stolen {A Letter to My Four}

The snow started falling last Monday.

The flakes were small, hardly noticeable.

Really, it was barely a scattering compared to the heavy fall of Thursday.

But as your faces were lifted up in wonder in the parking lot of that church, trying to catch bits of white on your tongue,

your Christmas presents were being lifted out of their hiding place, unbeknownst to us, and the gifts we had purchased for you were now in the hands and homes that they were never intended for, security cameras capturing it all.

I remember telling a Sunday School teacher once how much I loved the nighttime, how my soul felt like it was reviving when the days started growing shorter and dark would settle earlier.

He didn't give me any time to explain why before he told me he questioned my faith. Questioned whether or not I had given my life to Jesus. Encouraged me to question my eternal state.


Only two of you have faint memories of living in the places where I spent my years growing up. You only remember the flatness of the Albertan prairies from pictures I show you. You have no concept of a town of less than 2000 people, of the nearest major stores being over an hour away, of an Arctic wind blowing from the north and freezing your skin in less than 30 seconds if you weren't properly covered.

Your memories of those things come from my own.

You don't remember the long drives from a trip in to the main cities in the black of night that had settled in just after 4pm on a highway that seemed to go on endlessly while a moon reflected off of the fields covered in a hard packing of snow.

But I do.


I loved those drives, not just for the quiet hush with only an occasional lone car passing us, lighting up the spaces around us for just a brief moment,


I loved it for the way light became a beacon.


Dotting the empty vastness of space around us, light would flicker bravely from farms and homesteads planted firmly in their places reminding us in our state of motion that we were not alone in our traveling.


I found that when the moon was new and gave no light, when the air dropped to -40 C and the cold around us was bitter, light would appear to be shooting straight up in to the dark whether it was from an approaching car or a single bulb hanging over the door of a barn.

The colder and darker the air, the straighter and bolder the light would appear.

I never got to tell my Sunday School Teacher that,

but I am telling it to you now.



Because last Thursday, when we had discovered your presents had been stolen, I tried to be brave and have hope.

But on Friday, once names and faces were known, I crumbled and felt like all I was doing was failing in this place where we live and work.


Failure can make air around one's soul grow dark and cold.


The four of you don't even know of this space that I sit down to write in yet. None of you are aware that I am trying to preserve memories for you in pictures and prose. None of you will know until you come across this specific post of this year: the year that your Christmas gifts were stolen.

I want to keep it that way.


Because tonight in the quiet hush of the dark, we will light the third candle for Advent and the space above our mantle will grow brighter, the other candles that I've placed around them waiting for the celebration of the day of Christ's birth, heightening our anticipation.

The name of this candle is Joy.

I want this to fill your memories of this season.

Yes. You saw me grieve on Friday, cry out my anger and my hurt and frustration. You saw loss in my tears without knowing the why behind them.

You bear witness to my wrestling, yes, but you will also bear witness to Christ's Joy ringing triumphant.


I know this.



In the moments before we discovered the theft and the loss of the things we had purchased and hidden away for you, we opened an envelope passed to us across a table at a dinner we had attended that same night.

Tucked in the folded crease of a Christmas card full of cheer was a reminder that God knew long before we did of the things that would be taken and had provided enough to cover what we had lost to the greed of another.


I love the dark and the cold of the winter because it is a continual reminder, every year, of the truth of who Christ is.


You who were so small and filled my arms now stretch tall and only the smallest of you can still curl up on my lap and I know that the days are coming when you will begin to know more fully the dark and the cold of the world around you.

The darkest days can seem like the most endless. And when it can't seem to get any darker, the fiercest winds can pick up and freeze you in your place.

But you must keep your eyes open.

You must wrap yourself in the truth of Who Jesus is.


Because Jesus, Emmanuel, He came into the darkness of our world.

Because Jesus, Light of the World, pierced the darkness of the world in the piercing of His own flesh.

Because Jesus, Risen and Conquering King, fills us with His light who believe in His name and place our faith in Him.


I long for the dark roads some days, my heart longing to see the flame of light stretching straight and true up through the dark.


But then I look at you, the four who love and laugh and live loud, and I can see it beginning, that flame flickering within you.

And should the sky grow darker around us as time spins with chaos all around us, I'll keep my eyes open and look,

Christ's Light is all around and within us, guiding like a beacon, pointing us Home.

To Love

His sister dropped him off with those two bags filled with his dirty clothes right outside the abandoned house beside us.

I caught a glimpse of his face, just before I turned back inside the house,

just before I cleaned out the rest of the clothes from the washing machine.

He had called Tony and asked if he could do his laundry at Madison House because we were all leaving for camp in the morning, but when the washing machine here in our home is large, and there was already crazy chaos happening, why not just do his laundry here?

He said yes in his quiet way.

We've almost been at Madison House 4 years. Not long, I know, but long enough to have memories that are embedded deep - long enough to know that first impressions are rarely correct.

He scared me, in that first year, and I'm not sure why anymore. I just know at some point, it changed. At some point, he began yelling my name across the street and waving as I would walk by with my little ones up the front steps. At some point the guard came down a little.

So when he walked in our front door and filled up the washing machine with his things, it didn't feel odd to have him in the house. I know it probably seemed a little odd for him, but he is loved by the people who live here.

Tony and I, we slipped out for a quick dinner and while we were gone, he must have slipped out too, promising to be back to finish up the wash.

Only we got home first, and I still had laundry to finish while his last load spun 'round and 'round in the dryer.

He kept telling me that he could do his own laundry, switch the loads and put it away - but he wasn't here and I stood in my laundry room completely unsure what to do. Not wanting to do the wrong thing, or offend in any way.

There's a sign just above the washing machine that a friend made for me in Canada that traveled with us here and that just keeps getting hung back up wherever I find myself washing clothes - a reminder of what I'm actually doing when I'm bent over those tubs and filling with soap or changing loads...I'm not sure if he saw it, but the words, "Blessing Room" stop me each time I take the time to read them and so that is why I did what I did.


Because folding his clothes was no different than folding the clothes of my own children - praying over him as the stacks grew taller was just as natural as praying over the piles for each of my four. One doesn't have to bear the title of "son" to be loved like one. Loving others takes place in the mundane and quiet moments - and sometimes actions are the only way to show the truth of it.


I had to run home the next morning before we headed out of town and away from wifi for the week to rescue a blanket a certain 3 year old had forgotten, and as I jumped out of my car the first yellow bus drove by and his face looking out at me from near the back windows beamed with a joy I rarely see.

And I have to ask myself why I am so often afraid to be bold enough to love? A woman who sits regularly under the shade of a tree across the street wanders by our front gate tonight while I sit on the porch reading and as she gets to the end of our property line, she begins to jerk around erratically. By the time she crosses the street, she is having a full on conversation with the air and the man in the blue house sits calmly and watches with his cowboy hat pulled low while he brushes his dog. When she double-backs 20 minutes later, she is calmer, her walking smoother and I keep rocking in my chair.

And I think, "Water. Why didn't I offer her water?" If I am to love like Jesus, offering water should be a natural thing.

I don't even know how to pray.

Neighbourhood kids leave our yard half an hour later and as we are cleaning up the last of the mess, Olivia whispers to Tony and I, "I think the lady in that car is dead".

Tony's eyes meet mine and he quietly walks out the gate towards the Suzuki that's been parked by our house for the last 2 days. Windows are rolled down, and that's when I see her face, mouth open, eyes closed.

"She's breathing", Tony calls to me and as everyone heads to the door he leans close and says, "I think you should give her some water".

And that fear settles in as I walk to the end of the kitchen and pull down that mason jar and fill it with water, as I reach for the biscuits Liv had made for dinner...the ones that were in the shape of a heart.

And Tony and I, we go to the passenger window and 3 minutes feel like an eternity when you are trying to wake someone up you don't know and as she's jolting awake, she's trying to convince us she's fine, even though we all know she isn't.

But she takes the water. And she takes the bread baked into a heart.

And as I mopped up the water spilled on the kitchen floor later, I *know* that could have been me. It could have been me just as easily strung out and asleep in a car with the windows duct tapped together, I know the wickedness of my heart and where I could have followed it to.

Moving down to 4th Street was nothing heroic or grand on our part - as Tony said this past week at camp, "There's no good or bad parts of town - they are all bad apart from Christ. Our sinfulness is just expressed differently in different ways and places".

My sinfulness is exposed more here than maybe anywhere else - but the beauty of Christ's grace is that He allows me to see it so much faster and He gives me opportunities to try again in ways that I can easily recognize.


I picked raspberries in the garden of a dear friend while she was out of town at the beginning of the month and at first, I found it hard to know where to begin. It wasn't until a cat brushed against my legs and I looked down that I found the heaviest and sweetest fruit was hidden under the leaves and branches near the bottom.

And it's true here...and there...bending low in service, worship, and love - it can be difficult - it can be hard and hurt deeply, but in the quiet, in the Shadow of the Almighty, we can find the sweetest Peace and Joy.

For the Ones Who Call Me Mama

I opened my eyes in the morning light of my tenth Mother's Day to find the littlest one had crawled into our bed in the early hours of the night and curled up into the curve of my hip with a sleep-clenched hand resting on my face.

Lyla, she turned 10 just a few short months ago - went and spun my heart in bewildered circles with how fast time really does go.

She laughs when I ask her to stop growing, to become small again. 

I look back onto the very first post I ever put on the internet, the one where she is only 4 months old and still able to be held, all curled up in my arms and my brain can't fathom at how all those fully lived days have become wispy and faint memories. 

Our lives looked so different - he and I were so different.

We were at the very tender beginning, still wondering how many babies we would have, still figuring out how to relate to one another as husband and wife now that we were also Daddy and Mama.

Our families, both immediate and extended looked so different - I never could have imagined the great gaps that would be left where people should have been.

I thought mothering would look like the ideal picture in my mind that had grown large since I was small - 

but that's just it...my picture of mothering was based on my own ideals and dreams.

 

There's a little one who pulls up her chair beside me in the tutoring room Monday-Thursday. She always has something left over from lunch, and as she pulls out her sheets of homework, she'll pull out something to nibble on too.

She has my heart - I'm sure she doesn't realize this,

her mothering hasn't turned out the way she thought it would either.

This small one, she had curled up beside her mama just a few short years ago, curled up for a nap in the early afternoon pressed up against the one whose heartbeat she had known since her very beginning...but when she woke up, her mama didn't.

Medications were unknowingly mixed and turned lethal.

And this daughter was left without a mother.


She came in one afternoon a few months ago and plopped her backpack right beside my feet. Started pulling out her homework and as she laid it on the table, she turned her eyes on me and asked,

Can I call you Mom?


My own four had been running in and out of the room, homework done and freedom calling and shouting my name over every little thing.


The juxtaposition of both situations made my breath catch.


When was the last time she had even said the word, Mom? And here were my children yelling it freely and without thought.

I wrapped my arm around her and told her how much I loved her - how much I wished that she could. I told her how everyday I looked forward to her showing up, how my day was that much brighter when she came around the corner and sat down beside me.

I told her that I could never be her mama, but that I could always be her friend.


It made me think of my own family, my own small four - how where there has been lack, God has always been so faithful to provide.

It may not look like what I imagined and dreamed about all of those years ago, before there was Tony and the life that we've made...but we have never lacked love.

A decade into this journey where all four of my children are under my roof and I don't know what the future will look like for all of us.

I know what my dreams and my hopes are for each one -

I know that I hope they will always love and follow Jesus, that their faith will be strong and grow...

that, should they become mamas and a daddy themselves, that their marriages will be ones that are grounded in the beauty of the gospel...their love for the other would be deep and faithful and lasting.

That the faith that we are sharing with them now would be passed on to the next generation of grands that we don't yet know.


I can hope these things and pray for these things,

but I can't guarantee it.

The world around me, with all of it's statistics and foreboding predictions would have me believe that hoping for good is foolish, to prepare for the worst instead.

But just when I begin to worry, just when I begin to think that maybe the darkness will win out in the end over my children, I am reminded of the verse that begins the recounting of those before me who had faith and hope in the sovereignty of God alone:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

The further in to the chapter one gets, the more it becomes apparent that faith *doesn't* guarantee all we hope for and dream about...the final verses of the chapter talk about their successes and victories, yes, but just as quickly we read about mocking, flogging, imprisonment, torture...

What I need to be reminded is that hope should lift our eyes off of ourselves and what is right in front of us and cause us to realize that what, or really, Who we are hoping and longing for is Jesus. What pushed all of these men and women listed in the 11th chapter of Hebrews to remain faithful to God?

It was the promise of Christ.

My heart that loves my children fiercely is slowly learning to see their hardship and struggle in a different light. 

Learning that when my heart breaks over their pain, that this is a tender mercy as well. That here, when everything feels like it is falling apart around them, that Jesus is showing Himself to be all that they need. That He is greater than this moment, this temporal pain...and He is even greater than the joy that threatens to overwhelm.

So, for the ones who made me a Mama,

May you know how deeply you are loved, despite my daily failings and fumblings.

May we enter into these days together firstly and fully recognizing that this is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it!

May you be bold and courageous when others are mean and unkind and when you hear gun shots across the street, because sweet ones, the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

May you face the future with hope and joy regardless of what the outside circumstances are, because in Christ, God always leads us in triumph.

The four of you are the joy of my heart, even on the days when I feel so overwhelmed...over and over you point me back to the feet of Jesus and make me see my deep need for Him and feel such deep love for each one of you.

As we press into each other learning from and growing through the good and bad, may we be found pressing into Christ together, for He is our refuge and our strength.

With all of my love, always,

Mama

 

For When You Come Home... {A Post by Tony}

Yakima, Washington.  

From time out of mind, it never mattered.  It was just another town I had to reduce my speed for on the way from Seattle to Sun Valley, Idaho.


I came here once, by accident, in 2005.  I ventured as far off the freeway as the Olive Garden where my wife and I stopped for lunch.  I remember us telling each other as we left, "It seems like a nice town".


In 2011, when Starbucks transferred me out to Yakima to open a new store, I wasn't too worried; I had no connection to Yakima and people telling me I would be killed or shot, or worse, seemed like the normal panic I assign to those who are overly concerned about a life and death they can't control anyway. 

      "Don't worry about it', I told my wife, '"There are bad parts of Seattle too and we avoided those once we were aware of their locations."

 So this week, early on a Monday morning I found myself in the Terrace Heights Cemetery stumbling and slipping in the wet grass and mud during a rare downpour, trying to find a body, or at least what was left of it.

  In 1858, Leonard Andrew Foster was born in Ohio.  In 1899 his wife died giving birth to his last child and he decided he'd had enough.  He didn't want to live with the memories her life and death brought by the very familiarity of his surroundings so Leonard packed up and moved to a place with no memories:  

Yakima, Washington.

He remarried a woman named Alvira who was from Kansas, lived in a quaint little house behind Target and worked as a night watchman until his death in 1942 at the age of 84. 


When Leonard moved west he brought his son Claud with him.  Claud settled down and had a son of his own named Ken and Ken had a daughter named Karolyn.


Karolyn lost a brother in Vietnam and swore that her sons would never play with guns. But, boys being boys, and fathers having the last word, the first time I was ever shot at was at the age of 13 while my father and I took cover in some rocks, bullets whining past our heads.  The hunters below us had buck fever and couldn't see past the deer they were shooting at so we hid in the rocks while they spent all their bullets, missing everything.


 The week of Thanksgiving, 2015, I was at my house, across the street from Madison House when 5 of the older kids dropped by needing gloves and scarfs.  I told them I would meet them at their house, and headed to Target.  


Their house is further up and further in to the area known as "The Hole". (As you can see, I've wisely taken my own advice and stayed out of the dangerous parts of town.)


 Before I can knock, shots ring out just down the street, another volunteer is with me and we stop and listen thankful for the concrete walls of the basement entrance.  More shots fire into the cold night air, 12 shots have been fired in total, two revolvers. A couple seconds later one of the kids I am bringing gloves to flees down the alley behind the house and looking back I see 3 more MH kids running along the front of the street. 


I head back out to the street knowing this is the moment when I could be killed, but I also know that fear is a weakness I have always resented when I sense it in myself.


Jesus did not call us to weakness but to acts faith and great kindness.  Besides, once the shooting starts, I am fully aware that it is over quickly and the instigators take flight almost immediately.  As I reach the street in front of the house I see residents coming out of the their homes armed with bats and other weapons in case further fighting breaks out.  I take a head count of the kids I was bringing clothing too, all are present.  An unmarked police car pulls up and I take point, explaining who I am, what I am doing down on 7th.  The police let us leave without further incident and I hug each of the kids and tell them to stay safe; I know they won't.  I head home to my wife and kids, thankful to be serving God in this capacity of His work - it is truly a blessing to be used by Him.

I never had a connection to Yakima until my sister was digging through some of my grandmothers old papers last week.


 I stare down at the small brick that has been depressed into the earth by time.  It is covered in mud and I had to kneel down on the soaked earth of Terrace Heights Cemetery and remove the leaves and filth just to read the name stamped into it: Leonard Foster. 

If I could speak to him I would tell him that his wife's death, was not in vain.  That even then, God, knowing everything, was planning to use his great great grandson's life to reach kids in Yakima, but that Leonard would have to lose someone he cared about for that purpose to come to fruition. 

 God gave us His son, someone He loves, because He loves us. For the same reason, I am not afraid to die, so that others may know Christ.

For When Everything Changes

It keeps spinning, regardless of our circumstances. I know the truth of this. But there is a small part of me that wonders at times if there is a slight stuttering in the moments that matter, that form and change us...those moments that move us from one direction to another.

I guess the world would stop turning all together with all our many moments that bear the weight of change and notice, so I know it must keep orbit, held in the hand of the One who formed it. The weight of these moments instead lay deep in the heart, where He alone sees us most clearly.

It flashes in time with the blue and red lights filling the street just down from our house in the middle days of July, in the aftermath of bullets that fly from that rolled down window and enter the house just across the street from our front door. As officers tape off the road to block traffic and my phone rings with the number of a visiting dear friend. While she wraps her arms around me and calls out to Jesus for help as tears run down my face from not knowing if it was the house of one of our kids...from not knowing if someone we loved was hit.

In this circle of prayer, as we call out to the One who is Peace Himself, I find my footing in the anchor of His Name.

He hears us in the middle of chaos.


We leave for the unhurried craziness of camp in the hot heat of July. We leave the confines of wifi and cell service for the freedom of play and we find rest there, even as physical exhaustion sets in.

The second week that finds us in the height of trees and the cool of mountains, while the full moon was rising high and the field was full of the night game and teens, I slipped out of the lodge to walk in the fresh air. I wasn't expecting to hear the guttural scream or feel the tension of the next moments before the rushing and the call for 911. I see Tony's face and I know it's bad. Arms reach out for Zeruiah and I run with him in the dark on a dirt road so that we can direct the ambulances and emergency vehicles. I reach the field as it begins to fill with swirling lights circling around one of the most dear women I have come to know. This woman who retired just one week before coming to counsel a cabin full of teen girls and point them to Jesus was now laying on the ground with a leg twisted in all the wrong ways and there are times that tears are the only answer to the moments that don't make sense.

And as everything is tilting from the weight of pain and confusion, as her broken body is lifted up in pain onto a stretcher, the rest of us lean into the presence of each other as we hold the hands of the ones beside us and lift our voices up in prayer.

In this tender place, as we call on His Name, we find Him and He sets our feet on the truth of His presence. And He is there as the moon climbs higher and the smallness of us is deeply known.


It's here on this night, this night filled with so much brokenness and confusion, that a girl who knocks on my door back home and draws maps of imaginary places for my girls, who smiles shyly when I point out her creativity...it's on this night that she hears the beauty of Jesus and how He makes the broken beautiful and she says yes and makes the decision to give her life to Him alone. She gives Jesus her yes in the hours before her counselor gets rushed to the hospital and we could see how God uses all things, good and bad, for His glory.

For whatever reason, I think of the story of the Good Samaritan and the brokenness he embraced. How Jesus used the unlikely to open our eyes to the beauty of mercy and calls us to a life that comes near to the hurting and tender places in another.

That's the key, I think. We may be afraid and uncertain, trying to feel our way through the dark and unseen, unsure of how it is all supposed to look. We can choose to stay back from what we don't understand, feel ill-equipped to handle, or even of what we are afraid of. We could, and it would be understandable. But Jesus pointed out the beauty of the most unlikely to a lawyer who looked the most likely in order to reach his heart.  The Samaritan, who was considered "Bad" by the ones who hated him most, came the closest to the wounds of  the broken in front of him. He didn't just come close, he gave of his time, his comfort, his resources - he gave of what he had and God called him "good".

Tony and I sit in the aftermath of these weeks at camp in our coffee shop chairs that still smell of caffeine and pastries and we ask the hard questions of each other that we had been praying over and seeking direction for to find that sometimes the greatest gain in our lives means the giving up of what feels safe and familiar. Realizing the small ways that I've been relying on things or "this is the way we have always done it" rather than on the faithfulness of Jesus.

I've been afraid to go smaller and simpler, afraid of what it would mean for our family and schooling and ministry. But if I look at the model of what Jesus put forward, I see a man who let go of what he had in order to add to the care and benefit of another.

The hearts of my children matter no less, the beauty of our family demands that Jesus and what He is asking come first. Letting go of the known for a season opens our hands to receive the gift of the unknown, trusting that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights. Letting go of the much allows us to give even more to the ones that He brings into our lives - we give from a place of trust and find that the stuttering moments have only just changed the orbit of our lives. Where we once focused on what was we now find our lives lined up next to the I AM and there is rest here.


Only half of the moon showed her face last night, she orbits and her face shows less then it did in the dark of a field surrounded by towering trees just one short week ago, but I'm not afraid of seeing the smaller picture anymore because I know that we are all seen by the One who spoke our days into existence and we are safe here, for we are always under the watchful eye of our good God.

  

A New Journey

He tells me in the quiet last night that there are words to lay down behind the words I had just spoken.

That, Kimberley, you need to write about that.

His dad, the one who wore that leather hat and had that gentle smile - he was the one I would turn to with these questions I was voicing...I always would turn to him, almost like I couldn't remember what he had said only a few months before. Remind me again, please - how do I forgive? What does it look like again?

But someone else answers his phone number now, I'm sure - his eyes have taken in the glory of God and he has joined those around the throne and worships fully and completely. And the words that he spoke long ago have slipped away like the years have done.

I folded myself up on the kitchen counter this past week, knees against my chest and I faced two choices - I knew which one I wanted to choose. It seemed easier and safer.

But easy and safe - it doesn't seem palatable anymore.

It could be because Christ's path doesn't seem like it should be easy and safe anymore.  Taking up a cross and losing my life for HIs sake doesn't sound like it is supposed to be easy.

And yet, He is incredibly tender and merciful - He sees the fear and the weakness that mark this step, this unfolding of my very quiet, yes.

Thomas Watson, hundreds of years ago, he penned these words,

Jesus Christ was once bruised on the cross: "it pleased the Lord to bruise him" (Isa 53:10). His hands and feet were bruised with the nails; His side was bruised with the spear. A bruised reed is a member of Christ; and though it is weak, Christ will not cut it off, but will cherish it so much the more...See, then, the gracious disposition of Jesus Christ - he is full of clemency and sympathy. Though he may bruise the soul for sin, he will not break it. The surgeon may lance the body and make it bleed, but he will bind up the wound. As Christ has beams of majesty, so he has a heart of mercy. Christ has both the lion and the lamb in his escutcheon; the lion, in respect of his fierceness to the wicked (Psalm 50:22), and the lamb, in respect to the mildness to his people. HIs name is Jesus, a Saviour, and his office is a healer (Mal 4:2)..How full of mercy is Christ, in whom all mercy meets! Christ has a skillful hand and a tender heart. "He will not break a bruised reed".

And maybe this right here is the very first step - trusting Jesus. Not mapping out each path or turn that could be taken, but trusting the One Who sees the outcome from here. Who planned out the ending before the beginning even began...

Jericho

It's while I'm sitting across from a friend that I look out the front window and see Tony on the sidewalk across the street walking slow with one of the kids from the mission. He's one of the first kids I ever met in those early days - one of the first to welcome this family so obviously not from this area.

We've entered into our third year here and three years deepen voices and grows up inches and three years hardens tender hearts who witness so much pain.

We've watched it happen to him - this kid who stands on the edges of being a man - who feels lost on these edges and hides his hurt with anger.

I get it.

I've done it too.

So while my friend sips her coffee, I watch Tony walk the permiter of the field outside our window - this wide open space in the middle of the ghetto and I think of Jericho and those walls...high and strong walls and the slow and patient walk of those many feet.

I know the edges of my man - I recognize the way his head bends as he listens, the steady rythym of his steps as he stands strong beside the boy lost who is grasping for something sure. Hands in his pockets, I know he is praying and I know that as they walk that perimeter, God is doing something unseen.

Last night, we lit the second candle and spoke of Peace - of the Prince of Peace. We read of Abraham and Isaac and a father's love and the hints of the coming Messiah. We listen and sing of Emmanuel and our hearts long for His coming as we circle the perimeter of this life we are given day after day, step by step.

Faith - it propels us forward...it keeps us circling the Jericho in front of us. Whether it's an angry kid or an unsteady future or a restlessness that won't go away.  Faith propels, but trust in the goodness of the God who has called us keeps us in motion. It's a knowing that it isn't my footsteps that will bring down these walls, but the very hand of God. It isn't my will that keeps me walking, but it is the presence of Jesus - the very One Who is Peace that keeps my heart steady.

So these days grow darker, but these candles, one by one, grow brighter, and like the slow and steady walk of those praying down walls we keeping moving forward, keep pressing into the One Who is with us in all the broken mess.