Moments in Grace

We have this one Christmas tradition, the kids and I. We read this book, An Orange For Frankie. It is a small thing, this little tradition.  The three year old, he says,"Here comes the train. Toot, toot!" Because in the story, there is a family with a bunch of kids, and they have a train, that runs right through their back yard. I can't imagine what that would be like, bunch of kids, train in your yard. Oh, wait, I can.  And here it comes, rumbling like a freight train, and it is one,  in my backyard. And this family, they do this amazing thing.  They feed the homeless folks who ride this train as it stops by their backyard. And in the story, this one morning near Christmas, the youngest boy, Frankie, he gives a homeless man who doesn't have a shirt on his back in the middle of this Michigan snow, his best sweater.  His Christmas sweater.  The one his sister made him. And the man, he is thankful. But Frankie, he finds out that ...

I walk paths of gray concrete almost every day for five years. Five years of walking and praying. Praying for this place and people who live here in this small corner of the wide world, and pray for God's grace. Five years, more than five years of this and me trying to be light in this small corner.  Light in darkness. Praying for ways to be light, to show the true Light that has come into this dark world, I walk. In the midst of hot summer, full of light, streaming, I was busy, so busy, raising this neighborhood full of kids. There were usually at least a dozen here everyday, many times sixteen and the week of neighborhood Bible club, there were thirty kids here every day and ministry too. But it's easy to get tired and feel like your time, your giving, your hospitality, it's not making any difference.  It's easy to let the hardness of ministry, of raising a neighborhood, and the conflict that goes with having sixteen kids at your small house all the tim...