My Hope

  A little while ago, I was meeting with one of the students and we were sitting on a dock over a lake at a nearby park.  It was a pretty spot and easy to focus on God in the midst of His creation.  While we were processing some of the complexities of parenting, a woman came up.  She apologized for disrupting our conversation but said she just wanted to snap a picture because it just looked so beautiful.  One thing led to another and by the end of the conversation she’d poured out a lot of the pain she’d been going through and as we prayed for her, the tears flowed.  Eventually we parted ways and as we reflected on the opportunity to minister to her, a stranger yet another believer, I thought about the parable of the lost sheep.   The Parable of the Lost Sheep Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinn...

  The last post was focused on Naomi returning home and ending with Ruth’s declaration.  Unlike her mother-in-law, Ruth chose to leave and not look back.  Hers is the point that the refugees we work with have reached.  They know they will not return to their country of birth to live, but most cannot even return to visit.  Despite Naomi’s own feelings of bitterness and grief, Ruth had an unwavering desire to follow her, to become like her.     Ruth followed Naomi to Judah, but it was also the welcome of Boaz that continues the story, and the amazing thing is, it’s not just one generation that’s impacted.  The book of Ruth does tell us part of the genealogy, but Matthew shares a detail that’s left out.    5  and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,  6  and Jesse the father of David the king. Matthew 1:5-6 We find out in ...

We’ve been watching the events in Ukraine with grief and heavy hearts, knowing that their stories are similar to the ones we’ve heard before and yet there is also the hope that perhaps their stories will turn out differently.  Time will tell.  Leaving one’s homeland is never an easy decision, and most often those who flee are met with unopen arms.  They make it across one boarder into another country that is often struggling with their own financial and societal troubles.     But the current message I’m hearing is a different one.  It’s one of welcome.  That still doesn’t make the journey easy, just easier.  Families have been torn apart, fathers staying to defend their country; mothers fleeing to protect the next generation.  Homes have been destroyed leaving an uncertainty about what one could return to.  The welcome the Ukrainian refugees are receiving in Poland and other neighboring countries is enc...

  We were honored to have a friend we met in Lebanon stay with us recently.  It was a huge blessing since we hadn’t known we were leaving for good and while we’d seen her before leaving, it wasn’t the same.  Her time here coincided with a midsemester performance at the afterschool program the big girls are participating in.  As we chatted with a Syrian family we’d met the week before, our conversation naturally drifted to Lebanon and Syria.   The husband was planning a short trip with a group from his church to help with relief and outreach in Lebanon, but it had been canceled because conditions there are so unstable at the moment.  He started telling us the story of the pastor of the church they were planning on working with, someone he’d previously known from Syria.  I listened as he told us the dramatic testimony and cost that the pastor and his family had paid for following Christ.  While Lebanon has a number...