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.