Movers and Stayers by Lorraine Triggs

712, 131, 121, 441, 507, 1n225.

This string of random numbers is not random to me. The numbers are the house numbers of addresses where I’ve lived, beginning with my childhood home: 712 South Kenwood Ave, and ending with our current house number in Winfield. And I am well below the average number of times Americans move in their lifetime, which is 11.7 times.

Ellen Barry, writing for The New York Times (July 17, 2024), featured a study of adults in Denmark who moved frequently in childhood and concluded that “adults who moved frequently in childhood have significantly more risk of suffering from depression than their counterparts who stayed put in community.”  It also found that income—whether high or low—didn’t make a difference if you didn’t move in childhood. “Being a ‘stayer’ was protective for your health.” Frequent moves cost social capital, and one of the biggest costs is community.

Just watch an episode of House Hunters International. The new homeowners will wax eloquent about their new home, the view, proximity to restaurants, and then admit that it has been hard to find community and make friends. After one such episode, I said to my husband. “That wouldn’t be our problem. We’d find a church right away.”  

As followers of Christ, we are “stayers.” According to the Apostle Paul, we are fellow citizens, members of the household of God, being built together into a dwelling place. We are a body. We’re partners, brothers and sisters. We’re rooted in him. Talk about being a “stayer.”

As followers of Christ, we are also on the move. From Abraham to John on the Island of Patmos, Scripture pushes us beyond the here and now to the now and ever shall be, world without end.

To get from here to there, we need to be like Abraham. He was a mover. Though unsure of his destination, he was more than sure of the One who promised. We need to be like Abraham and his descendants who acknowledged they were strangers and exiles on the earth—not stayers because “people who speak thus make it clear that that are seeking a homeland.” (Hebrews 11:14) The writer of Hebrews continues pointing out that “if they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.” (11:15)

And that’s the tension we experience as “stayers” and “movers,” between our status as strangers and exiles and our longing to return to the good old days. The good old days might not be as calendar specific as we think, but instead reflect our longing for days when tears or pain or regrets didn’t intrude on our lives.

My husband points out that these longings are fitting longings for strangers and exiles on this earth—longings that reflect our heart’s desire for that better place, where tears are wiped away from every eye, where pain and mourning don’t exist.

And those good old days, the former things we yearned for on this earth? They will have given way to the new heaven and new earth, where we find our homeland and settled rest, “no more a stranger, nor a guest, but like a child at home.” (“My Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” v. three.)

But like a stayer at home at last.

Unnecessary Sacrifice by Wil Triggs

Our first year of wedded bliss was surprisingly wonderful for Lorraine and me. Looking back at it, we agree that we dated for too long before engagement (about three years) and then our engagement was also too long (nine months). When we finally became husband and wife, it was great. After the stress of planning the event and moving our two homes into one, we were relieved.
 
Relieved, but still kind of new at this marriage thing and a lot of stuff just happens by trial and error. So, imagine my surprise and dismay when I looked over at Lorraine during a worship service one Sunday and saw her crying. It was a happy time in church. The children’s choirs were singing. It wasn’t the part of church where crying was more or less a normal response.
 
Uh oh. Had I done something wrong? Back in year one I thought that most of the time if she was upset, it was my fault. I have since come to learn that there are many reasons for tears and things like that are not always my fault.
 
I put my arm around her and did a little seated side hug. She composed herself and got one of those little lace embroidered handkerchiefs out of her purse and wiped her eyes. And we continued in worship.
 
“What happened?” I asked her when we were in the car, headed home.
 
“I miss my girls,” she said. “I don’t know any of them up there singing.”
 
When we married, Lorraine read somewhere that it was a good idea to take a year off serving and just focus on each other. We agreed to do that. We sacrificed our service to help assure a good footing in our marriage.
 
Dumb idea. We should have known that not serving was not a good fit for us.
 
Looking back, I think maybe it wasn’t a sacrifice at all, but a selfish inward focus. It was just the sort of thing one of those wedding magazines might feature.
 
So when  someone reached out with a new idea to reinvigorate a ministry. He invited us to take part in it. We were surprised to hear from him and to think that we might be able to help start something new. We repented and added service back into our lives.
 
Being married is a wonderful thing, but it didn’t take the place of Lorraine befriending and teaching the girls. For us, it wasn't an either/or kind of thing. That’s why the tears came as she looked at the girls singing in choir—she missed her midweek time with them.
 
We didn’t need to sacrifice service to assure a good marriage or our love for one another.
 
In fact, we’ve found serving in the church helps our marriage. When we give to others, we and our marriage grow stronger. Our lives are better when we serve. Sometimes we’ve served as a couple. Other times individually. When we give our time to other people in the church, we are better people for the service.
 
Lots of people know us as kindergarten team leaders. We’ve been doing it for a long time now. It’s such a privilege to help. Thanks to parents who allow others in the church to help point their children to Jesus. Yes, it’s the responsibility of parents to be the primary teachers of their kids, but when we serve in little ways in Kids’ Harbor or in STARS, we experience the community of church in ways unlike other parts of church life.
 
Nothing takes the place of service. It's in our DNA as children of the heavenly Father. Just as we love because he first loved us, we serve because "even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45) 

And his is the only sacrifice that's necessary for salvation and service.

Let's Make a Deal by Lorraine Triggs

I am a fan of summer camps.

Though my husband didn’t venture off to camp as frequently as I did as a child, he did attend music camp. As part of the closing program, the camp would bestow an award for camper of the week, an award my husband mocked . . . until he won it. The best award I managed to snag at my church’s camp was the trophy plaque for the cleanest cabin, but it was a daily award and my cabinmates and I had to relinquish it twenty-four hours later.

At the youth camps I attended, the awards stakes were higher. The very first day of camp, the camp director announced that a male and female camper would be crowned Mr. and Miss Camp (insert camp name) at the end of the week. The staff would be on the lookout for campers who showed Christian virtues—you know, love, kindness, purity, and let's not forget athletic prowess, popularity and good looks.

Putting aside my teenaged pettiness and envy, it struck me then as it does now that handing out awards for Christian virtues seems a bit at-odds with, well, Christian virtue. There’s something transactional about it. If you do this, I’ll do that for you. If you're this way, I'll reward and applaud you.

We hear echoes of transactions in the garden and the wilderness: If you eat the fruit of the tree of life, you won’t die. If you bow down and worship me, I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the world and glory. The first Adam accepted the transaction; the second Adam didn’t need to. His already was the kingdom and the glory and the honor.  

It’s hard to shake our progenitor’s affinity for transactions, and we carry it over in our prayers and expectations of what God should do for us. If I pray enough and work hard, then God is obligated to do what I want. Imagine the blessings and answered prayers we could amass in the here and now because God would keep his end of the bargain we made with him.

But we aren't really playing "Let's Make a Deal" with God. That's not how God works with us. it's impossible for us to ever keep our end of whatever deal we might imagine to get God to do every single thing we want.

It should be very good news for us that, far better than keeping his end of the bargain, God keeps his promises, and is “a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” (Nehemiah 9:17)

In her book Keeping a Quiet Heart, Elisabeth Elliot writes: “Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.”

And any blessings and answers to my transactional prayers give way to the reality that God has blessed me, and you, with every spiritual blessing here, and there.

Made By Hand by Wil Triggs

I read an article last week called “Make Something With Your Hands, Even if it’s Hideous.” In it writer Jancee Dunn quotes Dr. Michael Norton saying that when we create something we “feel a sense of confidence and a sense of mastery that is really hard to get sometimes in other places.” Dr. Norton is a business professor at Harvard, and he’s making the circuit for his new book The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions. Dunn suggests making things, even simple things: salad dressing, refrigerator pickles, origami birds or pianos or boxes.

The advice is simple. Don’t be too serious about this. Have some fun. Taking the time to make something is good for us. Such activity lowers stress and boosts happiness. The article goes on to say that the act of making can be healing and healthy for the maker. It describes a frame decorated with shells that a person has held onto for decades. Apparently, it’s not a thing of beauty but is a sort of symbol of a time and memories from the past.
 
As great as it is to make something, I find that the making becomes even more rewarding when we don’t clutch things in our hands but extend open hands to others and give them away.
 
Something special happens when making and giving combine. A gift that’s baked or grown or painted or cooked feels especially personal, coming from the heart of the giver. It’s not the same as ordering a gift from Amazon and having it shipped. Any gift should be appreciated, but handmade makes a difference.
 
Amazon doesn't carry Julia’s Ukraine votives. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Julia brought yellow and blue votive holders she had made to our small group for us to take home. I pray when I see this jar with the yellow and blue insides.
 
Or Kathryn’s cards. She designs a card for any occasion—birthday, Christmas, thank you, ArtSpace, many others. I’m not sure how many, but they are one of a kind. You can’t buy Kathryn cards in a store.
 
There’s Lorraine’s baked goods—shortbread, cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookies. Her savory gifts are also handmade treats: roasted vegetables, one of her many potato dishes. And from her garden, bundles of lavender, hanging upside down to dry.
 
Think of the personal element and enjoy—jelly that tastes like summer, candles that smell like Christmas, baked goods that appear on the counter at work.
 
When Ed showed his handmade bench in our recent art show, he wanted people to run their hands over it, touch it, feel every groove, with every swipe leaving more grooves in the seat to touch. The shape was handcrafted in ways you could feel.
 
Jesus is creative in and well beyond our creativity, and Jesus was always giving: wine where there was water, fish for empty nets, healing for disease, the ability to walk on water instead of drowning in it, words of truth that have stood the test of time and changed the world for good.
 
Where there were fears and doubts, he made mud for eyes and gave sight to the blind. The garden, the torches, the ear he healed, the nails, the wood, even the grave. He made everything.
 
Jesus calmed storms, cast out demons, stopped the bleeding. He invited Thomas to touch his wounds, to feel and know the gift of his broken body. Jesus cooked breakfast on the beach. His hands held and holds all—from the foundations of the world to the darkest corner of my heart to the foundations of our faith.
 
His body and his life and his words—ultimate gifts profoundly personal for every one of us.
 
Besides making the whole universe out of nothing, God shaped dust into human form and breathed life into it. Our bodies—every one of them made by God. No clones. Twins, sure, but all different and beautiful. Remarkable healing powers in many ways built right in. I think sometimes I’m just renting this house I’m living in. And then with blood and nails and death in another’s body not mine, God creates something new, but not just a thing. In giving away everything, even life itself, his Son makes a people, his people altogether new.
 
As we enter into each other’s lives in tangible gifts, we echo in microscopic ways what Jesus has done and is doing. He incarnated to become one of us. He gave people tasks—drop your nets on the other side of the boat, fill the jars with water, take the boy’s lunch and share it. Then he died, rose and ascended—his whole life a kind of gift. Then comes the Spirit, yet another gift, giving to us even more ways to serve one another and the people around us, prompting people to go and share the good news.
 
We receive. We make. We give away.
 
Love, the real and genuine and eternal kind, is made by hands, his and ours.

Trouble Free by Lorraine Triggs

Every family has a pyromaniac, and I am not one.

Fourth of Julys find me gingerly holding a sparkler that a pyro-friendly relative has lit for me nor do I crowd the gravel driveway impatiently waiting my turn to set off Target fireworks. For a date-specific holiday, the Fourth of July somehow morphs into an entire week of festivities as neighbors set off their stash of fireworks on July 5, 6 ad nauseum.

Our dog is the one member of the house that shares my July Fourth angst. He remains on high alert from the first hiss-boom-bang of fireworks to the last. He paces and whines, looking for refuge but refusing any we offer—laps, crate, favorite toys, blankets. My dog finally settles down around Bastille Day. Fortunately for him, and unfortunately for us, we don’t live in France.

When it comes to angst, I am more dog-like than I care to admit.

You would know it, but life's fireworks scare me. When day turns to night and the booms start going off, I grasp for toys, blankets, inconsolable with the booms going off around me. I want to run away and hide, put a blanket over my head.

At the first hint of disappointment or distress, I go on high alert, expecting more to come. I pace as I whine, “It’s not fair, Lord.”  I jump at every alarmist statement on social media, as I look for refuge and rest in all the wrong places, people and things. If I hold a dogged devotion to rest as the cessation of trouble, I miss out on both rest and refuge.

I read Matthew 11:38, and eagerly accept Jesus' invitation to promised rest, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  OK. I can breathe now. But in John 16:33 Jesus promises that we will have tribulation in this world. So, which is it?

Both.

It’s in him we have peace, and that precedes the tribulation in John’s gospel. On the same night that he would experience his deepest anguish, Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. (John 14:27)

Nor should our hearts be fooled into thinking that we can manufacture refuge from tribulations. If a simple move to another state would keep disappointments at bay, then I say move away. If Ikea sold easy-to-assemble fortresses, I would load up as many that would fit in our car for a block party of sorts that keeps troubles where they belong—outside my fortress. I want all the rest and no tribulations.

But that’s not what Jesus promised. He promised not to leave us as orphans. He promised to make his home with us. He promised the Holy Spirit, and to that promised peace in John 14:27, Jesus made sure we knew that it was “not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

Instead of a devotion to a trouble-free life, may my devotion be to a trouble-free heart that is

Resigned, submissive, meek,
My great Redeemer’s throne;
where only Christ is heard to speak,
where Jesus reigns alone.
from O for a Heart to Praise My God, Charles Wesley

Summer Theater, Winter's Tale by Wil Triggs

There’s a drama going on in our yards, and I’m not talking cicadas. The curtain goes up and the sun shines down like a spotlight on some amazing performances.
 
A just-picked tomato, fully ripened on the vine in the back yard. Add a bit of salt. Don’t leave it on the counter to sit at room temperature. Just eat it. Like an apple or plum. The meaty warmth, the tangy sweetness balanced with the pinch of salt.
 
The English pea. Pull its little zipper to open its jacket and the peas spill out magically. Put them in the simmering water and when they rise to the top, they are done. Add your favorite herb if you like. Let their heat melt a bit of butter. Sweet jewels of the earth.
 
Just weeks ago, they were seeds, little ones you could barely make out as they fled your hands free-falling onto the burrow of earth that then covered them like sleeping bags and tents keeping the kids warm in their backyard sleepover. Rain comes, then sun, a spotlight on the stage, shining on them, time to act, don’t forget your lines or the blocking. Again, and again. Here they are today—lettuce leaves, brilliant greens with hints of yellow green and a streak of burgundy that suggests blood but is nothing really, just a touch of color to fill your salad bowl, a canvas on which you can paint other colors—carrot, tomato, parsley, pepper.
 
What are the little black dots I rush by as I mow the grass? When I’m done, I go over to investigate. Black currants in two places. These new hedges are not big enough to bear much. Tiny blackberries in another. Their canes quite old, many years hidden in the shade growth of a makeshift meadow. They hide in cool and verdant shade. These few fruits release their juices and natural pectin with the help of a little sugar and a bit of flame. No need to worry about canning; there’s just enough here for a piece of toast—here today, gone tomorrow.
 
Last week a friend gifted us with an onion from his garden. Better than Vidalia, he said. We took it home and added it to the evening chowder of summer corn, tomato, potato. No tears upon cutting it. The onion was sweeter than you could imagine.
 
The leeks have a long way to go. They aren’t even as thick as a number two pencil at this point. But they will thicken with time. Something to look forward to in the fall or even the winter. They’ll stay alive even through snow and ice, heartier than I could ever be, but I have only to wait. Maybe I’ll harvest on my birthday week in December, and we’ll have one of them in our potato leek soup. This is something worth waiting for.
 
God routinely takes a little seed and transforms it into whatever, a bunch of lettuce you can trim leaf by leaf and it keeps giving more. A little seed, dirt, rain, sun. Voilà. There are so many varieties, more than we could ever imagine . . . a vine of cucumbers, multi-colored radishes. Think of the crazy vine of tomatoes that tastes like nature’s candy, carrots in the many colors of Joseph’s coat, just-picked beans filled with natural flavor, so many shapes and colors. What’s God going to come up with next?
 
What about people?
 
The dead of winter, people stand frozen, like statues of hate and sin, lost. Maybe these are people I don’t like. People I can’t stand. People not like you and me. People who think they’re better. Maybe they are and that’s why I don’t like them. People I know are worse than I am. I might want to act like weeds, choking out new little sprouts or blocking the sun when the little sapling is just getting started.
 
I need to find refuge from those misguided thoughts. Repent. It’s hard to tell what a seed is going to be when it’s just a seed. We need to have faith that growth and change and hope is all around us because it is God who is doing the work in people even more so than what’s happening in my backyard garden.
 
Perhaps the Lord of the harvest wants to use us as part of the dirt, sun, water regimen that transforms from seed to plant to amazing harvest. What can we say? What might we do to be a part of the theater of transformation God is producing and directing as we plant, water and weed in the solstice of his ever-loving Son. He will surprise us as he uses us, transforms us, as he grows and changes the garden of his goodness and life that’s all around us, a tragedy that becomes a comedy, a stone statue in the garden come to flesh-and-blood life.
 
Like Hermione . . . 
You gods, look down 
And from your sacred vials pour your graces 
Upon my daughter's head! (Winter's Tale Act 5, scene 3)
 
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! (Psalm 34:8)

No Thank You by Lorraine Triggs

In their quest to expand our childish palates, our parents established the “No, thank you” portion rule that we followed when guests at other people’s homes. The guiding principle behind the rule was unfailing politeness. If an unfamiliar dish was passed to us, or worse, a familiar dish that bore no resemblance to the real thing, we were to take a very small portion to taste, without the drama of gagging, spitting or commenting. That was it. If the host passed the dish again, we were allowed to say, “No, thank you” and keep passing the dish to the left. Even when a host was insistent that we have “seconds,” we could stand our ground. “Oh, no, thank you.” 

The good news is that I’ve put away my childish palate. The bad news is that I deleted the comma. In the theology of grammar, my plate is now full of no thank you portions. These portions are the bits and pieces of my life that I never wanted and didn’t ask God for, so if you don’t mind, thanks, but no thanks—really no thanks.

It’s tempting to take the easy way out and blame these so-called dark days for my thanklessness, but that wouldn’t be fair to the dark days. I discovered that unlike revenge which is said to be a dish best served cold, no thanks portions are best served cold, hot, warm, room temperature. It doesn't matter with this a steady diet that feeds my memory of all things gone awry, and my forgetfulness of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

It's time for a change in diet, one that feeds on words sweeter than honey, words of life and beauty, words that David wrote in Psalm 31:21, 22: “Blessed be the Lord, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was in a besieged city. I had said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from your sight.’ But you heard the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cried to you for help.”

I practically choke on the no-thanks portion stuck in my heart. David was thanking God in the besieged city. Perhaps the real miracle isn’t the rescue from attacks, but the wondrous steadfast love of the Lord that shows up—not on the other side of the city or in a different place altogether—but right there in the alarm, in the pain and in the trouble, and transforms thanklessness into thankfulness.

Lately, I’ve been so focused on the no thank portions in my life, that I have forgotten another portion which David described in Psalm 16:5: “the Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.” A cup that overflows as goodness and mercy follow me all the way to a feast, where the host welcomes me "no more a stranger or a guest, but like a child at home."

I'll have seconds on that. And thirds.

Knowing Father by Wil Triggs

My dad grew up on a corn farm in the heartland. His was not a wealthy farm, but things got worse with  the Great Depression when the banker in Allen, Nebraska, skipped town with the savings of most everyone. When that happened, it would be an understatement to say that the banker let down the family and the community at large. Decades later my dad told me the men of the town took out after him to do colorful things to him that I cannot use in a church publication. They never found him.

I don’t know how my grandparents managed to keep the land as long as they did, but one thing I know from the stories my dad told, farming was hard work—hours of work before breakfast, followed by more hours of work for as long as the sun allowed. There were so many variables to a good season. Pests, this summer think cicadas. Enough rain, but not too much at once, and he saw his share of twisters. And the market price of corn could make or break a good harvest.

Dad was in the middle of his family in birth order. He watched older siblings make choices about what to do once they reached young adulthood. None of them stayed on the farm. They left the middle of the country to try to find their fortunes elsewhere. The hard winters likely are what in part drove Dad to head west instead of east. Another factor was one of his oldest brothers falling for a woman whose great-niece turned out to be the woman he would marry, my mom. 

Some of the brothers settled along the coast of California. My dad and mom in Santa Barbara, and then by the time I was born, Long Beach. Uncle Vern and Aunt Ardean in Ventura. Vern was younger than my dad, just the right age to serve in World War II, something from which he never quite recovered. 

Now that I’ve lived more of my life in the Midwest than on the West Coast, I fully appreciate their choice, especially in the time they did it. There was no smog back then, no freeways. Communities of newly built homes were just farmlands of citrus fruit or almonds or avocados. Imagining what it must have been like, I’m sensing something Edenic. I was once on a farm in Ukraine in the summer, and I felt as if I was back home in the California, cherry valley of my childhood, eating sun-warm sweet cherries right from the tree.

My dad didn’t have to deal with snow, and farm work was not what he wanted to do either. Both he and my mom were hard workers and instilled that in their kids. We learned to work hard no matter the task. So, he gave himself heartily to whatever he was hired to do. Uncle Vern fled Ventura to own a service station in a town on the road to Las Vegas. This town consisted of his service station, a restaurant and a few rooms to rent for the night.

California wasn’t the only place my dad’s family moved—and the family scattered. My own siblings eventually scattered as well. So, when one of my sisters moved to Connecticut, we drove across the country to see her. We would stop along the way at relatives. Washington, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa.. Dad took his Super-8 camera and filmed the journeys.

So many of their stories got lost along the way. They didn’t talk about the past much. I didn’t experience most of what I’ve written about here, so these fragments are all I have. So much of Dad’s life happened before I was born—how to know him?

My older siblings experienced life as a church-going family. I never did. There was a church that was dubbed “our church,” but we rarely went there. Something had happened to make them stop. It could have been recovery from an injury that stopped him going. I don't know.

My dad loved his family. He especially loved babies. I can still see him at one of our family gatherings. No shirt. Brown pants held up by suspenders and the baby in his arm like a bag of groceries—this was a supremely happy moment for him.

When I was in early grade school, we all learned that he had a disease for which there was no cure.  He was older than my mom, and I was the youngest of their six kids, so by the time I came along, two thirds of his life was behind him. Our relationship was forged in that final third, when he figured out that he wasn’t going to strike it rich, when he became housebound and needed help just to breathe or to move from room to room, when he realized that he was dying. Dad died in 1980. It was my care for him as he moved toward his own death that brought us together and enabled me to love and serve him.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Dad.

The paternal drive doesn’t have to be lived out only with our physical progeny. So, here’s to the brothers, uncles, neighbors, pastors, Christian friends who give themselves to those without dads.

All the more remarkable is the Fatherhood of God. My dad went across the country to escape hardship and to meet, marry and care for Mom. God traveled through eternity into incarnation to make his enemies his children. He comes when we least deserve him. Consider Jesus, the true father of us all and how he described himself in the Gospel of John.  
“I am the bread of life.”
“I am the light of the world.”
“I am the door of the sheep.”
“I am the good shepherd.”
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
“I am the way, the truth and the life.”
“I am the true vine.”

As I grow older, the actions and realities of my own dad fade, but the fatherly love of the Triune God grows more real. His ever-present care reflects in the “I am” piercing my soul, opening my blind eyes, warming my heart.

It is Christ’s care for us as he moved toward his own death and truly died, rose and ascended. This is what brings us together and enables me to love and serve him—to know him as the best and ultimate Father, making every day a different kind of Father’s Day.

Memories of my dad fade with time. He is one I will never forget in whole, but particulars, seem farther and farther away. 

Jesus, on the other hand, I see him more and more. I see him in the way God uses unexpected people to do surprising things. I see him in the deathbed room of my best friend. He shows up in Kindergarten for all to see. Sometimes you can even find him in church service, in the songs, the word, the prayers, the people sitting beside you. When I’m enjoying a meal with a friend, Jesus is right there at the table with us. As I write and rewrite even this, he’s here with me watching, reading, clinging to every word like a loving father would. When the enemies come to us, in places like Nigeria or North Korea or in warring Russia and Ukraine,  he takes the hands of his children, he lifts them up on his shoulders and walks so they never have to take another step on their own ever again.