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.