Joy Candle

Joy.

We never do quite get the candles to light this week, defeated by the cold desert wind that buffets every corner of the building. And, I have to wonder a little at the folly and the strangeness and the beauty of this all.

There's a sticky hand in the candle tray that belongs to a child who is already counting down the weeks to her next prize, even though the last one was never brought home. We play a different game, because I have yet to laminate new books of the Bible cards, and they protest at the change, playing, but still asking for the other one, the old one. Smash booking happens at the speed of light, but the new girls settle in afterwards to spend long, quiet moments duct taping their covers.

We talk about kids' camp and Royal Family Kids' Camp and stumble our way through Christmas carols, and the birthday girl leads us through the Advent liturgy.

Joy is such a strange word to use for this often harried process.

When we trail long chains of connected middle schoolers up and down these stairwells in search of paper puzzle pieces and this video is probably the only thing that they will remember from the talk. When they are sassy and full of life and when they quietly explain that they weren't here last week because their dad was too mad to go to church. When we're right in the center of this muddle that is the holidays.

Joy is 'grace recognized'.

Grace that piles up like these burned out matches. That echoes through little ones who pop in and out of range.

The 6th grader, who sets himself down one step below me at lunch, as tentatively close as school rules allow, narrating the important movements on his game and fully expecting that I am watching the rest of them, is vibrating with fear. Fear for break. For transition. For a thousand big and little things that a crowded cafeteria doesn't lend us the space to go into.

And, it doesn't look like joy.

But, I can see the Grace. Amazing Grace. Because, transitions haven't always been this easy for him. As we sit here and talk about the games that we used to play in my reading group, the cookies that I once brought them from Cambodia, the matching bracelets for all of us, Grace makes the space to remember.

Once upon a time, back in the cookie, bracelet, game playing days, when I had a different phone case and went by a different name, he was a tiny little second grader who responded to a temporary change of rooms by climbing up onto the table, curling into a ball, and screaming like the zombies were coming. Terrified.

To sit here now, almost quiet, so different from the little one who refused to let go of my sleeve once he was finally coaxed off the table, is Grace upon Grace upon Grace for this kid who still hasn't quite figured out the art of making friends in a world where you change schools several times a year.

He's working on it. Always trying new strategies. New groups of kids. And, I am reminded once again of the not yet-ness that is the point of Advent in the first place. The waiting and the growing and the hope that there is something better yet to come. Doing our best and trying new things and finding Grace in the places where our healing still looks an awful lot like a broken world.

When the wind blows out our match before the tiny flame can quite do what we thought it was supposed to, as if we could control wind or fire any more than Holy Spirit, there is still Joy.

So That Our Light Will Show

Sunday.

As my 5th grade girls slide and tumble over each other in the hallway, pick up rug burns and snatch at papers that rip beneath their fingers, a Peace candle flickers quietly in the background.

We stood, huddled on a tiny dry patch of pavement to burn through the half dozen matches that unpracticed fingers require to light these two tiny flames. They are braver this week than last, more certain that the laws of nature will keep this sudden whoosh of ignition from jumping out to burn them, and they rotate through the tasks that they have chosen, much the same way that my sisters and I used to.

Story is a running countdown of how many minutes until they can light the candles, lead each other through this simple liturgy, play a game in the hallway while a now-seventh-grader pauses on the stairwell to see if she recognizes it from her own days in this elementary school rhythm.

"Advent means coming. Jesus is coming."
A little blond with her brother's deadpan sense of humor volunteers to lead us through the words, a half dozen voices echoing the response over and over and over again. "Prepare the way of the LORD."
"Let's wait together. Let's sing while waiting."
"Prepare the way of the LORD."

They giggle and slide and yell to each other in barely contained stage whispers as they take turns hunting on the floor for which book of the Bible I have most recently called out. We pack up our bins, blow out candles in the dripping rain, and settle back onto the floor in the main room, hand over hand as we sing the words to these clapping games. Shoulder to shoulder as we lay on our bellies for a hand tapping one that twists our arms into a human knot.

Building in memories for the days when we don't have a candle to remind us of peace.

7th grade girls talk about not feeling God, about wondering how this Old Testament LORD and this New Testament Jesus could possibly be the same, about moving past the point of easy answers.

And, I am grateful for this. Grateful for a church that makes the space for 5th graders to thumb through pages and run through hallways as they learn to navigate their Bibles. For middle schoolers to admit that Lewis' Trilemma doesn't answer all of their questions, that reading the Bible sometimes leads to having fewer answers than before.

That makes room for both certainty and doubt.

Now, we’re being honest, that piercing truth that reveals a little of the hurt in their souls, and I can’t help but think that heaven is going to be a little like that. 

People say that it is going to be beautiful, and I fully believe that it will be. But, I think it’s going to be the sort of beauty that catches us by surprise at first. Eternity will be beautiful, but it also has the opportunity to be raw, at least at the beginning. Because, I don’t think that we will have forgotten the things that we saw and felt and did on this earth, the things that were done to us. Instead, I have a picture in my head of healing, as we eat up as many years and decades and centuries as it takes to learn to let the veils fall from our eyes, to learn to speak truth.

The book of Revelation says that there will be tree there, in the middle of the city of New Jerusalem, with leaves that will bring healing to the nations. Not leaves that have but leaves that will. Leaves that will bring healing to the raw pain of humanity and draw out the beauty of a creation that was fashioned in the image of the Divine.^⁠And, I think of the way that a wound itches as it heals, the way that stories itch at our minds just before they are ready to spill out. And, I think of my kids who seem to know that, somehow, in their lives full of secrets, the truth changes everything.

There will be stories in eternity. Stories that span generations and people groups and continents, and stories that happened in the blink of an eye. We’ll see God in those stories, because He’ll be right there, next to us, pointing out His fingerprints and His presence. Our words will weave together as healing and beauty and truth that always comes back to the Truth that is Jesus.

And, I love that. I love that because it means that, like so many aspects of the Kingdom, there is no need to wait for eternity to begin to experience eternity. The Kingdom is already here, but not yet fully present. Because, we can tell stories right now. 

I can sit down here, and type words into this computer, and I have the opportunity to capture a slip of Divine healing, of eternity and of peace.

Because there is peace; even in the hard stories, there is peace.

We don’t like to think that. We like to think that Christ’s peace comes best through quiet mornings and a gentle sunset. And, it does come that way. Creation whispers the soft peace of a Creator, but it also groans with the longing for the return of a Redeemer. It groans, and, as part of Creation, our souls groan with it.^⁠In every moment of peace there is discontent and in every moment of quiet there are a thousand voices and memories begging for our attention.

You are a soul, just as much as you are a body, and it is because you have a soul that you are discontent. Because, a soul is meant not just to soak up the peace, but to work and to be busy, side by side with Creator. God didn’t breathe into the lungs of humanity and then leave them prone in the garden to soak up sun beams and enjoy the mist on their faces. God breathed into the lungs of humanity and gave them a job to do, a garden to care for, a world to explore.^⁠You are discontent because your soul longs for the kind of work that it was created to complete.

Your soul longs to work in community, to nurture beauty, and to bring forth things that have not always existed. Your soul longs for the garden.

And, those memories, those voices from the past that whisper in your ears and in your heart and stir up things that you would prefer were long buried? Those are more than just symptoms of a broken world. Those are signposts, flickering reflections in the dark that point to something better yet to come. Because, you were made with a memory on purpose. 

You were made with a memory wide enough and deep enough to capture the majesty of a Creator and the wonder of Creation. You were created to hold onto stories, created to let the past intertwine with the present, to let the faithfulness of yesterday inform the decisions that you make to trust tomorrow. Because, we have a God who tells stories and gives stories and is, purely through His being, a story of the most epic flavor. And, that God gave you a memory to weave stories of your own.

The God who was neither in the strong wind or in the earthquake whispers in His still, small voice,^⁠ and He whispers that His light is brighter than the greatest dark that your story could ever contain. 

“All we’re doing here is laying in color, very dark, so that our light will show.” 

Bob Ross (The Best of the Joy of Painting, Ep. 1029)

Unnecessary Miracles

First Sunday of Advent.

7th grade girls come to church with Bibles and journals and grocery bags full of art supplies. 5th graders carry Bibles and go together to dig through the prize box. High schoolers decorate and make popcorn and bend down to clean always more feathers off the floor.

And I am reminded that hope comes in the middle. When the world is mixed up and messy and topsy turvy, there is always a moment. There is a moment where you gather around a flickering candle flame and let your fingers trace out silent prayers, the way that these 5th graders do.

"Jesus, I hope that so-and-so or such-and-such..." as they weave their dizzy fingered way into the center of the labyrinth, and, then, as they come back out,

"Thank you that they already..."

I challenge them to pray for three different situations, and, for a holy moment, there is nothing but the whisper of fingerprint to paper.

The same fingers that run down Bible pages to find verses before the presenter can ask for them, that trace old last names and new ones on book covers and name tags, tap through my phone to find Inst*gram and pause, just there, over the tiny image of a college freshman who was at RFKC with us this summer.

Little girls who make the space to hope. When they are waiting for an elementary aged brother to maybe, someday, learn to walk; watching a sibling struggle; building new stories out of a tangled past; simply doing this very complicated thing called life; we light a candle out in the shivering cold and bring it in to the scarf covered floor of our space.

The story today is about Abraham, and the slight blond on my left side is restless, doing and undoing the green buckle on a pink, leather Bible. We first met at Royal Family, our two cabins walking, running, stumbling, leaping up and down the same steep hill together often as we trekked the distance from cabin to bathroom and back again, and I can see this lesson digging deep, prodding at tender wounds in her soul. "And, then, Abraham," the presenter uses his future name for simplicity's sake, "packed up everything that he owned, left his family, and went, even though he didn't know where he was going."

The words are too familiar. Leaving everything. Not knowing what comes next. Bio home. Foster home. Foster home. Adoptive home. She asks to go to the bathroom. Fiddles with the buckle. Counts down the minutes until the story is over. Folds her feet into the corners of these chairs. Anything not to think.

Middle schoolers are a swirl of stories and questions, a handful of girls that stay back after service for yogurt and granola that they drown in pomegranate seeds and chocolate shavings and colored sprinkles. Bowls full of popcorn. Cups of coco. Mandarin oranges that they pass to leaders for peeling. Paper and scissors and glue. Paint and glitter and patterned tapes. Christmas music and Bible verses added to their journals for a quiet hour, two.

The mess comes through in pictures. The Holy doesn't. And, maybe that is simply the point of it all.

To hold to Hope in the midst of this.

O, Come, O, Come, Emmanuel.

Come when we fill these warm rooms with our hiding from the cold, when we share spider videos and talk about nonsense and decorate high schoolers to look like turkeys. Come when our kids ache with uncertainty and untold stories. When they stand close or surround each other with protective layers of presence, Gryffindors bristling and Ravenclaws searching for just the right answers. 

Because, even the "easy" draws in the global lottery echo with the brokenness of humanity. Leave us searching for Hanukah lights, Joseph's incense, Advent candles. Unnecessary miracles.

Bottles of baby oil that ought to run dry, but don't. Not until we should have used twice as much as we physically pulled out of the bags. Not until the last child has completed their craft and the wooden pews ripple with little faces and brilliantly colored sun catchers. "Ale jwenn Seyè a pou l' ka ede nou. Toujou chache rete devan li," the papers read. "Look to the Lord and his strength; seek his face always."

The story was about Elijah and the widow, the jar of flour that was never empty and the jug of oil that did not run dry. Our team repeats the words as we shake this plastic container, a few precious drops still clinging, just there, at the bottom. Repeats the words and counts the adult heads file into the church. Too many heads.

The baby oil may not have run dry, but the cooking oil will. We are certain of it long before it happens, these well rehearsed numbers running through a dozen heads. There aren't enough bags of rice. Not enough beans. Even as we scoop these spilled ones off of the polished concrete floor, chasing them down where they've hidden in the pits and the cracks. There isn't enough. Won't be enough.

A white lace table cloth brushes at my face as we pinch up the last of the beans, prepare to load back onto the bus and bounce our way towards lunch while people walk away empty handed. A table cloth that holds that not-quite-empty bottle of baby oil.

An unnecessary miracle.

It doesn't make sense. It is incense on a camel's back while you are led away to slavery. It is oil for lamps in a temple that will eventually be destroyed. Fish and loaves multiplied for a people who will still wake up the next day hungry. It is a toddler boy, born to an unwed mother, fleeing as a refugee to Egypt whiles cries of loss echo through the night.

It is this candle that we light. This tension of the in between. The knowing that there is more. A Rescuer. A Champion. A healing that has already come and is yet still coming.

It is Hope.

Running

This.

There is a gentle sort of irony to filling shoeboxes in a week where the world is still reeling from terror attacks, scrambling over each other to say the right thing, do the right thing, let in or keep out the right or the wrong sorts of people according to who we understand those people to be.

Christians around me throw scriptures like it's a food fight, this one picking out a few kernels of the Exodus story and declaring that immigration is only allowed for believers, others answering with larger globs from Mosaic Law or the teachings of Christ, welcoming strangers and refugees as a reminder that "we too" were once sojourners in Egypt.

Strangers in a strange land and those who have settled into world that is not our home.

I am reminded that we fight terror with Love, that flowers and red and green boxes have a simple power to speak of Christ, to speak of a Resurrection that casts out fear.

This is a little of what it looks like to be a resurrection people, these shaking elderly hands that bring in a stack of boxes and a careful check, these little ones who cluster around a shipping carton that probably weighs more than any of them to carry it like a colony of chattering ants.

High schoolers who come in to load a semi trailer, puzzle piece a carton as full as it can be, fill shoeboxes, or "simply" stand around to pray. Middle schoolers who bake and frost cookies and finish their day by quietly straightening everything that could possibly be straightened.

Quilters who sew dresses, backpacks, and hacky sacks. Families who bring in dinner and snacks. Parents who drop off their children to volunteer and parents who stay with them to do the same.

While Facebook is filled with the red and blue of the French flag and the answering cries not to forget the rest of the story, not to forget Lebanon or Nigeria, not to forget Syria itself, when old stories surface as people dig for answers, for reason to be afraid.

We collect thousands and thousands of presents, as if a simple gift had the power to bring healing to hurting world.

And, maybe, in its echo of Truth, it does.

"For God so loved...that he GAVE..."

Because it is harder to fear or to demonize or to brush under the rug a child that you have made a shoebox for. Because, there is a power to putting faces, to putting souls, to these people that we like to discuss in the abstract.

Faces are powerful.

I think of a friend in Kenya who found himself running with a crowd of others from trouble that a few men who shared his skin, his hair, his ethnicity had stirred up. As they fled to a safer area, one of those beside him did a sudden double take and began to shirk away in fear. "Woman," I can hear the incredulous grace as he tells the story, "I am running just the same as you."

And, I think of the tens of thousands of voices that would tell us the same thing.

Think of planting trees in a town outside of a sprawling refugee camp, think of long waits in the lotto for resettlement and hurried journeys over dusty and muddy roads to the UNHCR when -- and if -- your number is ever pulled.

I think of the intense vetting process that holds back so many from ever even visiting the United States and the discomfort of sitting in a crowed office, surrounded by a language that you are barely learning, as your papers are stamped again and again and there is still no certainty of a visa.

I think of stateless children having their arm scarred to prove that they belong and a small, half finished church that echoes with the squawking toys of two hundred children. Children who may or may not have any way to prove that they exist.

Stateless.

I think of a coming advent season and a refugee savior.

And, I wonder how much of the world would tell us that same thing. They would start by reminding us of our humanity, remind us of the star dust and the life blood and the breath of God that flows through our veins, and then they would whisper/speak/shout those all important words.

"I am running, just the same as you."

When kids wander the halls of my middle school calling out, "Not afraid!" When there's hardly time to focus on a single mess before a dozen more have cropped up to take its place. When we pack these endless cartons and hold out a hand to help little brother up to where we are.

We're all running.

Are we running a race that speaks of Love?

And, It Whispers, "Holy"

The second week of November comes with its usual intensity, as if this particular time of year were determined to keep my head spinning, keep me on my toes, never let me forget that this is a dance with steps that I may never perfect.

Second Sunday of November means that we come with fewer masks than we usually wear. It means that we're close and we're honest and Glory and Mess go hand in hand to create this turbulent whisper of, "Holy."

Last week we started Sunday school with coloring pages and conversations about a potentially infinite universe and the likelihood of other life. They journaled prayers for the hungry, and then they filled a donation bin with grocery bags full of food.

This week, 5th graders with struggling siblings tell me that life is, "kind of sucky," and our presenters  share what it means to look for Grace in the midst of hard stories, to trust in Goodness, even when healing may not come. We mark down the names of those we are praying for and fill the corner of our pages with a soft fabric cross, as if there could be comfort in something that brought so much pain.

Because, there was. And, there is.

And, in this second week, we need to remember.

Remember that Jesus is enough. Remember that there is Grace and Mercy to cover. Remember that Love stepped down, and that that is both the beginning and the end of the story. Remember that it doesn't end here.

It doesn't end with middle schoolers who ask to stand outside in the cold drizzle of rain or the ones who pinch my sides and repeat my least favorite words for the sake of the laughter and the smiles and the connection that it brings. Doesn't end with these goofy hand motions or the wiggling, whispering 7th grade bodies that surround me during the lesson.

But, it also doesn't end with the sticky notes that the girls bring home scribed over with truth.
"Chosen"
"Loved"
"Righteous"
or the moments when they duck behind leaders for safety during games. Even these things are only shadows. Only hints of Glory unveiled, of Truth that has the power to speak life into being, in some ancient and unfathomable way that our best math and science can not begin to comprehend with any certainty.

And, I need that reminder.

Because, sometimes, being a high school leader is a dizzying cacophony that all boils down to loving these kids, exactly where they are and however they come.

It means jokes about the finer points of Calvinism in one moment and searching for wandered off children in the next. It's a dance of knowing when to leave them on the far edges of the room and when to pull them into the circle. It's a dance that I might not always get right, but one that we're teaching each other as we go, these kids and these leaders whose lives have been twined together for however long this season lasts.

It's about relationships and safety, relationships and safety, and relationships and safety.

There are whispers of, "Holy," in the words of this high schooler who is giving the message tonight, in the truth and the vulnerability, in the knowledge and the hard fought wisdom. Holy in his confidence and Holy in his uncertainty.

Holy echoed in the eyes of the freshmen who disappeared during the game but texted their location without second thought, who slip into the edges of my breakout group and watch until they are certain of their place in this jumble of words and truth and quirkiness that circles up in a house of prayer that is really nothing more than an almost empty portable and a couch.

Because, that is enough.

It is enough that there is forgiveness here, and grace.

Enough that these not-quite-growns of all ages come to this campus ready to speak truth with their words and their actions, ready to trust, even if only a little, that we are here to catch each other when we fall.

Faith is messy. Theology can take us down long and convoluted threads of conversation as we struggle to put words to the Other that is Divinity. Life is a tangle. But, somehow, in the midst of it all, there are these whispers of, "Holy."

Holy when we are honest about the lies that we tell. Holy when we look our pride in the face. Holy when we can draw close and trust that our leaders will meet us with the love of Christ. Holy.

They hoedown to, "Happy Day," and I am caught by the wonder of just how far we have come, just how far we have been carried by this grace. A year ago, we sang this song and huddled on this carpet to pray for the man who now walks across dark and dripping parking lots to bring back our prodigals.

We have a youth pastor.

A year ago, they stood close because we were about to jump into the unknown. Today, they are close with the nervous anticipation of what will certainly be a very good night.

They are growing and learning and blooming with a newfound ability to express this confidence.

And, they are right. Today is messy. Growth and truth always are. But, it is good.

Duct Tape is Like the Force

Sunday.

School starts this week. A new youth pastor is coming. (Did I mention that they hired a new youth pastor while we were in Haiti? Or, that their heads and their hearts are spinning a million miles an hour at the thought of it?) We're signing kids up for clusters. And, the whole lot of them have that just under the surface energy that means change is in the air.

Senior boys spark with the challenge of small groups breaking apart to duct tape someone to a wall. John Day kids tell their stories, just as Haiti kids spent last week telling theirs. Microphone in hand. A thousand things left unsaid. Speaking truth. But, not quite the entire truth.

Trusting that there will be future. An entire year to tell these stories. And, then, new trips to jar them loose and send them spilling from our lips and hearts again.

Because, we do healing in layers around here. Debriefing Royal Family under a hot Haitian sun, cross legged in these long skirts and curled close into this tiny strip of shade. Kids' camp under a sheet of stars. Old trips in the midst of new ones.

And, this summer has given us plenty to talk about.

Stories about fires and rainstorms and fear and hope that crowd for space behind their eyes, jostle with wishes and worries for the soon coming school year.

We pull in a little tighter on this type of day, whether they realize that we are doing it or not, crowded in tight around the red dot rug where we go over the schedule, far too many bodies for the "toes on the edge" habit that one of our graduated seniors worked so hard to instigate. Slowly mixing and shifting clumps of humanity, as we move back to being a youth group rather than these ministry trip teams. Closer together than the space requires us to be.

We talk and pray and sing and count heads. We duct tape children to walls.

Gently.

Somehow, that is the truest word that I have to describe our kids tonight. They are gentle.

They function together in a smooth mix of classes, the freshmen watching and mimicking the things that they see the upperclassmen doing. Seniors splitting from their friends to join younger groups for prayer. Stepping out into the parking lot to cut duct tape off of willing victims. Gathering around to watch as the last team finishes, names falling from their lips like quiet talismans. "Oh, this is so-and-so's group? They're going to figure out how to do it."

We're figuring out how to do it. Loose inside this transition as we always are, peering at the unknown edges of a new year, curious. But, also, perfectly content to draw close and stay right here.

To pray quietly for our schools in these circles where freshman and senior mirror each other's body language so perfectly that another leader simply nods when I point out the symmetry. Fully convinced, as only a youth leader could be, of the precious power within the lives of these kids.

If souls could have twins, these two would be cut from the same cloth.

Our freshmen mirror our seniors, the mass of sophomores and scattering of juniors settling comfortably into the space in between. They are gentle. They are wise. They have tasted some bitter fruit this summer and still held to the conclusion that God is Good.

God is Grace. God is Mercy. God is Love.

In the midst of fire and drought and fear and want and heartache: God is.

In the midst of goofy games and everyday life: God is.

It is going to be a good year.

But the wisdom that comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality or hypocrisy.

James 3:17

(If youth groups were birds, this would be how we do transitions.)