Moments in Grace

On the morning that the snow was coming down all sleet and icy in gray October sky, she came.   She knocked on my front door, and we asked her in.   We asked her to sit down and would she join us for a moment? Join these six kids of mine and a friend and I, all sitting around the kitchen table having hot chocolate, and tea and coffee.   We were reading John chapter 3 while some kids were hanging upside down from couches. Some were wildly running.   And some were finding wool hats to put on so that the moment I said that we were finished they could run out into the snow/sleet whirl and enjoy a taste of the first glimpse of winter.   When she arrived we were almost done.   Almost done for the day with our Bible study time, and here she was, like she had been invited to the party. Like she had heard some unseen voice whispering to come in.   So, she knocked and she came. I don’t really know her.   I don’t really know her story, just enough to make you want to clo

So these kids of mine bring me a caterpillar in a jar, munching fall leaves, fat and striped.   He is munching, perched on a thin stick they have placed in the jar.   “Oh, look at that!”   the little ones exclaim. “Can we keep him, Mom?” “No, he has to go back outside so he can get ready for winter.   Caterpillars have to eat lots of leaves and get ready for their transformation into a butterfly.” “You mean he is going to become a butterfly?” “Yes, he will spin a cocoon and sleep all winter and in the spring he will hatch out as something completely new, a butterfly.” “Can’t we keep him just one day in the jar, so we can watch him?” “I guess but in the morning you have to let him go.” But by morning, he had spun himself into that dark cocoon hung by a silver thread to the dark wood.   He was already hidden and waiting for his change, his new life to begin. The girls had first found the caterpillar in my neighbor’s yard.   My neighbor Ammie, the one who tragical