Advent : Faith Simple

For thirteen years, I spent the Christmas season in the Caribbean...in flip flops. 

Christmas Eve, always at the beach. No stores, no shopping, no competing with Santa, No Cold. Barely ever even cool.

I HATE the cold. 

If I didn't like it before, I despise it now. Even in Mississippi, it's been in the 30's this week and it's killing me. I love being outside, love having all the doors and windows open, love doing all our work from the porch and the park, and suddenly we are stuck and layered and cold. 

Suddenly the clothes I have for the kids that are good 365 days a year are not. Suddenly, I can't say, "let's go for a walk!" or "there are so many kids here, let's all play in the yard for a few hours!" Suddenly, the house is a continual mess of 24-7 indoor people. 

Suddenly we're all supposed to have socks. Times six people...dozens of missing socks and icy feet, all the time.

While the kiddos are elated to see frost for the first time...to see their breaths, to see the water they leave on the porch freeze, I sit surrounded by all the withering plants I've brought in and watch yet another Christmas-event-I-always-told-the-kids-about Covid-cancelled, and look through pictures of palm trees and truly perfect December Haiti weather...and skulk. 

I am the opposite of Elsa, and this morning, I realized the opposite of Abraham.

I read to four kiddos over breakfast from Genesis about Abraham's commissioning: "The Lord said to Abraham..."

He said to leave everyone Abraham knew and loved, all his family. God said to leave the only home he'd ever known, all the places he'd grown up, and Sarah, too. He said He'd make him a great nation, one day, and He said that Abraham would be a blessing. God had a lot to promise and Abraham didn't interrupt. 

So Abraham went, popped out from the crinkled page this morning as Ben spilled his eggs and Nora was attempting to talk for the 13th time about unicorn gymnastic dreams.

It couldn't have been that simple, I thought border-line bitterly, living out a few times now all the complicated behind, "so they went."  

Simple, I'm sure it wasn't. But I also don't hear any indication of skulking or reminiscing, like Stacey, of arguing, like Moses, of caution or mourning or dragging or fear like so many others.

Seeing nothing but the hardships of leaving home and family, Abraham went, went to be a blessing and to be a part of something great he'd just have to take God's Word for.

It wasn't simple...but it was faith, and as we all know from Hebrews, it was forever credited to him as righteousness.

Ministry here, and now, has been 50 times harder than I ever imagined it would be.

All our Christmas traditions...soccer games, Emmaus Christmas Party with our students, OMS Christmas parties with our fellow missionaries, Emmaus staff Christmas party at our house (my favorite event of the year), Christmas Eve with all our neighbors and friends at the beach, Christmas day all together with all the kids and friends popping in all day...they are gone, or happening still, but without us.  

We don't have any traditions here.  I'm not even sure what they should be or how to find them for the first time.

and. it's. cold.

I don't know what it was for Abraham and Sarah, but I know all that home they lost and all that foreign they felt. I know far-far from their families, all of them.

And yet.

God chose Abraham and Sarah to be the family that would bring the Savior to the WORLD...

     and they went.

I know He's chosen US, family, to be the family that brings the Savior to the world today... right now, like this, right here where we are.

can we faith simple enough?