I was riffling through a stack of books this morning that have been sitting next to my bed waiting to be read since... oh, sometime last fall... and found a copy of a selection from an Advent book that a friend shared with me back in December. Meaning to reread it, I had printed it out and stuck it in with said books; now, it makes a timely appearance.

Intended for the Advent season, yes, but it resonates with me now, this day. This day, I see broken and messed up and wrong. I see it, and I focus on it. And each time, each bit of news or negative word enables that focus. And it's true – our world is very broken. But sometimes I forget to look for the good, to look for the light. So I find these thoughts quite appropriate, and I want to learn to watch for the light, to dwell on the ways in which God is coming quietly and redeeming, the ways in which He is making right, the ways in which at just the right time, He will fulfill everything that is scattered and longing – the ways in which He has already done just that.

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This is adapted from an Eberhard Arnold selection in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas, bolded words my own.

"When the time was fulfilled..."
You came to us at Bethlehem when the time was fulfilled.
What insight there is in these words!
We are concerned day in and day out
with lesser or greater matters in the service of your kingdom.
We work sometimes until we are weary
and yet we see so little result.
Does everything remain as it was?Haven't we gone forward at all?
And then we see again the light
shining from the stable in Bethlehem.
Christ came not after a great mass of people had accomplished something good,
but as a miracle, as a gift from you
which you lay into those arms that are stretched out to you in longing.
So we wait sometimes for years to be freed from some need.
For a long, long time we look out from the darkness
in search of the light.
And then when the time was fulfilled,
a solution,
a light,
a deliverance comes quite unexpectedly
though perhaps quite differently than we expected.

So it is with our yearning for the salvation of the world,
for a new shining forth of the kingdom of God.
When we are discouraged,
this we can still know:
the time shall be fulfilled.
In all the noise and activity and work,
we often do not hear the hidden gentle sound
and the movement of the life that is coming into being.
But here and there,
you let us see how everywhere you are at work
and how your cause is growing and moving forward.
The time is being fulfilled.
The light shall shine,
perhaps just when it seems to us that the darkness is impenetrable.
But the miracle comes not only from above,
but also through us,
waiting for the hour when we open our souls up
and let them flow out into the world.
Wherever love proceeds from us and becomes truth,
the time is fulfilled.
Then your divine power floods through our relationships and all our works.
Then everything that is lonely and scattered
and longing for you
shall be bound together in you,
and then shall the world be born
in which Christmas is fulfilled as reality.

A final post about our last rescue trip in Ghana; if you need to catch up, start here.

As soon as we stepped onto the sand, I started looking for them. Had I known the faces of the other 20, I would've been looking for them as well, but all I knew for sure was to find the 2. The 2 boys from October, the ones I had met and shadowed as they worked. (You can read about that here and here.) The 2 who had shot cautious glances my way, not sure what to make of me, fearful of this stranger.



We sat under the mango tree and waited as the village gathered. One by one, children came out of huts along with teens and babies and adults, elders and fishermen and women of the village – everyone gathered. Hailey spotted him first – there's Dotse – but I hardly recognized him. With a fresh haircut and a striped shirt far improved over the stained, ratty Puma hoodie from before, he looked like any ordinary 11-year-old ready to take on the world. He hung back, acting shy, staying behind the crowd with a few other kids. But watching, always watching, and I wondered what he was thinking.

Michael appeared too, and I knew him immediately; though I hadn't seen them interact with each other in October, I could tell now that they were friends. They sat together on the front row of benches with the other 20, watching us and taking everything in. At 11 and 12, they were among the oldest, among the leaders in the group. When it was time to leave and get in the boat, they were the first of the group to climb aboard, talking excitedly.



I continued to watch the boys on the journey south. Their shyness slowly seeped out, replaced by smiles of confidence. Every now and then, I would catch one of them stealing a quiet moment away.



Once at the shelter, there was so much excitement: a nice meal, new beds, new school uniforms, new friends, new school books. They could not stop smiling/giving me the "why are you taking another picture of me" look. 

 

Before leaving, we had a chance to sit down with the boys and interview them, asking about life in Sabonjeda, what they liked about Challenging Heights, what they were most excited about, and what they wanted to be when they grew up.

Dotse, especially, was very open in our interview time with him, answering some pretty tough questions in front of us, whom he'd only been around a handful of times. The last question we asked was "what do you think about all the children who are still working on the lake"? JP translated his answer as this: He actually doesn't feel like going back there again so he doesn't even want to talk about how he feels about that. Touche.

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I don't know that I give enough credit to a God who creates such resiliency in children. In a world where youth so quickly become jaded and scarred by their pasts – whether chosen or inflicted – I feel as if God has protected these little ones and covered them in a very special way. Though they have quite a long journey ahead – one that will not be easy and will not be handed to them – and they will always have memories of the past, they are quick to love, quick to forgive, quick to begin again. In just three days time, they are becoming kids again. Michael dreams of being a famous soccer player when he grows up, but if he cannot, he'd like to become a teacher. Dotse also would like to become a teacher.



The separation of past and the welcoming of dreams wasn't even possible when I met the boys in October. One of the greatest gifts of this work is getting to see the transformation that is taking place in their lives. We acknowledge that it is a slow transformation of healing – physically, emotionally, relationally. But a price cannot be placed on the ability to begin dreaming.



Michael and Dotse now have a future. They now are the future.