I started listening more closely.  Little girls trapped in brothels... 27 million people enslaved worldwide….

It sounded unbelievable to me and I kept thinking it couldn’t be as bad as he was making it sound. He must have been exaggerating the statistics or something. I mean, if this was really happening on such a vast scale, I’d know about it, right? It would be on the news every night. My government—my church!—would be doing something about it. This guy must have an agenda.

“This guy” went on to talk about how whenever tragedy strikes there are always people who ask, “Where’s God?” He said he used to ask that, too, until he started going to some of those places of suffering. He had stood at the edge and then stepped into the aftermath of the worst of what man can do to other men. And he had seen that God was there. Just like His word promises, He is near to the brokenhearted. But he had also seen that the workers were few. So a new question emerged in his heart, which turned out to be the real question: “Where are God’s people?”

If you think about that question for five seconds… then you will have thought about it longer than I did that night in my kitchen. My defenses were high. I was very invested in this not being true, because… if it was true… I’d have to think about it, and I’d have to do something about it. And it was too scary to think about. And I could barely get lunches made for my kids to bring to school, so how was I going to do anything about human-trafficking?

So instead of telling God, “I’m here, send me,” I got angry, yelled something at the radio and turned it off. And since I wanted so badly to forget the whole thing, I did. But God didn’t.

A few years later I was at a concert where Sara Groves was sharing about how God was making her less of a “consumer of Christianity” and more like the Good Samaritan. A major part of that process for her was learning about the terrible problem of violent oppression against the poor: African widows and orphans getting forcibly thrown off their land; generations of the same family in India being enslaved in rock quarries, rice mills, or brick kilns for decades all to pay off what was originally a very small loan; little girls being serially raped by grown men every day in the brothels of Southeast Asia.

She told about an organization of true heroes called International Justice Mission (IJM) which was actually doing something about it—going into the worst places in the world to literally rescue the victims of this violence. Time stood still when she quoted IJM’s founder, Gary Haugen, who said that in the face of the worst of human suffering he no longer asks where’s God… but “Where are God’s people?”

Two thoughts immediately came to me: “It’s that guy!” and “I’ll never tell the story of what happened in the kitchen!”

That question! Why hadn’t I heard it right the first time? It wasn’t an accusation, it was an invitation! All of God’s commands are, I realize. God does care about freedom for the oppressed. He doesn’t expect me to fix it, He just wants me to participate in His rescue! And where would I be more safe, more fulfilled, more free than next to Him?

In the years that have followed I’ve been very blessed to become an enthusiastic supporter of IJM. Yes, I’m telling the story, because I’m no longer afraid, but inspired. I’m no longer bound up in my cynicism, but have been deeply humbled by the courage of those engaged in the very real struggle for justice.

If you would like to learn more about the work of IJM and are near the Twin Cities, there is an event at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis tonight that’s for you! Admission is Free, and even though online registration is closed, you can still register at the door! Click here for details. I sincerely hope to see you there!

Jan, a widow from town, had dialed my number. I could hear the sorrow in her quiet “hello.” The men had rung her church’s bell for the very last time, and they were lowering it from the tower. It would never ring here again.

She needed to process the pain a bit with someone. She wondered if I would listen to a poem she had written about her old church bell. To her, that bell’s familiar ring always sounded like home. Like Jesus.

I sat on the edge of the bed to listen, cradling the phone to my ear. She had barely begun reading when the raw emotion of it all grabbed her voice in a vice. And it wouldn’t let go.

“I don’t know if I can get through this whole thing,” she said, apologizing through her tears.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” I repeated, as Jan unzipped a bit of her heart over the phone.

Her poem, she said, was a love offering to a place where a piece of her faith story unfolded. She dialed my number because she figured I’d understand. Because writers do this sort of thing: We try to make sense of this wild world by putting down words like anchors.

She set her pain to rhyme, and began:

“They took the church bell down today,
To carry it away.
I heard it ring for one last time
as I turned and walked my way.”

The 125-year-old bell – which signaled the start of worship in the church  where her husband used to preach — had been sold. Workers climbed up to the top of the bell tower, loosened the bolts and made arrangements to send the bell to buyers in Colorado.

Before they took the bell down, the men rang it one last time. Jan heard the  ringing from her house, two doors down from the church. She walked to the corner to witness the dismantling of a memory.

Then, she went home and found a pen:

“There’ll be no call to worship
Each Sunday morn for me
The silence speaks so loudly
My teary eyes can’t see.” 

Jan and her church family whispered their last Amens inside that old Methodist Church in 2009. The church had been locally known for welcoming anyone, regardless of reputation, status or financial standing. From the outside looking in, all that seemed to matter to those folks was Jesus.

But membership dwindled. People got old, died, or just moved on. Young families, new to town, picked other churches. And then one day, the church closed. A local couple bought the building, to use as a residence. Naturally, they didn’t need a church bell in the tower anymore. So they sold the bell on eBay.

Jan’s voice wavered through the words:

“Perhaps it will be placed
To beckon God’s children to see
and welcome them to come and hear
God’s call ring out for you and me.”

When the ringing in your ears sounds like love, you never want it to end.

Jan remembers how that green velvet felt when she ran her fingers along the pews. She remembers how the sanctuary looked, dressed in Christmas Eve candlelight and greenery. She remembers who sat where, and the way folks would bow at that sturdy communion rail to taste forgiveness. She remembers loving Jesus there.

And she remembers the bell.

She read the last stanza, and a single tear slid down my cheek.

“Yes, they took the church bell down today.
It will not ring again at dawn
But somewhere that sweetest sound
will be heard throughout your town.”

I take the early spring personally as I see it out my kitchen window. Lilacs in April mean none in May, but His gifts and timing are perfect and I know more good is coming.

I still brace myself for snow, when the phone rings at unexpected times and I clench my jaw and can’t pray anything but, “Oh God, who died this time?”

When the alarm is for naught, I exhale and my breath joins the warming breeze that sings of coming summer and the rest and freedom I long for.

More good is coming. His good. For my good. For His glory.

This mama is stuck here, all spectator-like on life’s bleachers, begging God to make the sun stand still. I’d like one more day of Little, please.

It’s not her first date, for crying-out-loud. So what’s with me?

It’s just a tooth. Her first tooth fell out. That’s all. I repeat: It’s. Just. A. Tooth.

But it’s the first one to fall out. And I’m undone.

She, however, is beaming. She brings me the tooth, cupping it as if she were an archaeologist who just excavated enamel for the first time in recorded history.

I watch her cupping a smooth pearl, and I know this: letting go has a tangible quality, and it can be cupped in two hands. I know it, because she’s holding it, and I reach out to touch it — physical evidence that my baby is growing big.

Like I said, it’s just a tooth. But.

She disappears around the corner, her hair flying as she slides sock-footed across wood planks. I hold a pearl and wait.

She reappears, carrying a tiny pillow. It’s the little Tooth Fairy pillow with the red pocket stitched on the front. It’s the generation-old pillow where I hid my own baby teeth, one by one, then waited in the dark for dimes to drop from winged fairies.

Didn’t I just stand before my mama with a gap-toothed grin?

It’s all going so fast.

But you have to let go of what has been, to make room for what is to come. All things must empty in order to be refilled. This life, it’s a constant emptying and refilling, emptying and refilling. It’s a two-step dance, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the one leading.

My daughter opens her mouth to show me the new gap on the bottom row, and I pull down her bottom lip to get a better look. Already, I see the top of a new tooth pushing up through the pink. And I clap my hands and cheer for the new thing. God is always, always doing a new thing …

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? – Isaiah 43:19

It was for a new and amazing play about the last week before the cross of Jesus, beautifully crafted by some very gifted friends of mine.

For a decade or two I’ve wanted to be in a play but haven’t been able to (something about being almost constantly pregnant and/or nursing.)

I knew I wasn’t going to audition, but clicked the link anyway. “Equity and Non-Equity actors of all types…”

Mmmm, that would be me. But no. I can’t.

Later that day…
“You’re auditioning, right?” my son asked. “No, I can’t.” Too busy.

Later that evening…
“You’re going to audition, aren’t you?” my beloved asked. “Are you crazy? No!” (Too busy, right? Aren’t I too busy?) He said I’d regret it if I didn’t try, and that if I got a part we could make it work.

Later still, when I was all alone…
I started to shake and cry because I knew I had to audition. I’m several years into a purposeful and determined quest for bravery; committed to a life where fear never gets the last word. (Clearly, I have a long way to go.)

Why was I so scared? This wasn’t sky-diving, an armed assailant, or a terminal diagnosis. This was 16 bars and some reading.

The bottom line? Acting is just one more thing I’ve chosen not to pursue “until later” and have grown comfortably accustomed to the idea that I could, rather than making any plans for when I would. I didn’t want one more thing I loved to be held up to the light of “reality” where everyone (especially my endlessly and magnificently talented friends) could see it. Or worse yet, where it could disintegrate in one tragic gust of humiliation.

Wow. That’s so crazy on so many levels. Where’s your identity, Helen? Where’s your sense of His esteem? You know you love this stuff; you know it’s in you…. just try!

Have you noticed how fear will always provide you with a myriad of rational-sounding reasons not to do what stirs your soul? Fear has no integrity. Though it claims to be interested in your safety or well-being, its only objective is your captivity. (And its other name is The Devil.)

I prayed, but I could still feel myself searching for some good excuse for not doing it. I prayed some more, and I hoped the audition spots would fill up.

(Does it ever seem to you that God waits for you to wind down so you’re relaxed enough to listen to Him? Yeah, me too.) A couple of days later when I got home from a run, I started thinking about it again. But calmly.

He let me see a glimpse of the “worst” that could happen. And it wasn’t that bad. Suddenly I knew that I’d survive not being great, should that happen. And the odds were heavily in my favor that, no matter what, my friends wouldn’t disavow our acquaintance when it was all over.

OK, God, I know I can do it now. (I’m still not going to, but) thanks for the encouragement.

Then He put a picture in my mind of what it would be like to go to the opening night performance and see someone playing a part I might have played. What if she had gone in on a lark and didn’t have a lot of experience either? How would I feel knowing that perhaps the only thing she had that I didn’t… was courage.

I want courage more than a part in any play. So I auditioned.

Like always, He was faithful when I wasn’t prepared to be. He was patient when I was panicky. He was good and He was kind. And as always, He was right.

I left the experience with no regrets. And no part, either.  But that was so very much beside the point.

The casting decisions were spectacular and the finished product is breath-taking. It’s called, Kingdom Undone and it’s playing in Minneapolis through Easter Sunday. Go here for more information.

My husband still slumbers. Our blankets rise and fall with each breath. Outside, these farm fields hibernate under a white duvet.

I could go back to sleep, but I can’t. My thoughts are drilling down on one tiny word: So.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

I push back covers, fumble in the shadows for my Bible, and pad to the kitchen. I need answers.

I make coffee, turn on the news. It’s depressing. They’re talking about the pain … a world reeking with pain. So much pain. So much. So.  

I open the Bible on the kitchen counter — Bread as breakfast. I lean over pages, and push the slipped-down glasses up the bridge of my nose to find the word: “So.”

One word. Two letters.

There it is. Right there.

“For God so loved the world …” – John 3:16

That much. So loved.

I know these verses. I memorized them in nursery school, sitting on tiny wooden chairs, curved by the piano in the church basement. Hortense – I still remember her bluish-gray hair – bobbed her head to emphasize each word.

“God. So. Loved …”

Maybe this sounds like old news to you. But for me, it’s banner-headline material. Will someone call CNN? Does the world yet know that this — THIS! — is the antidote to the rancor of the world?

“So loved.” That much! So much love. So much. So.

I read the words again, marking the world’s most well-known verse in green highlighter for the first time in my Bible.

Could it be I missed this all along? Could I have missed the depth of the love?

If the Gospel were a novel, this would be the one verse on the dust-cover. If I were the author, this would be my 30-second pitch to the publisher.

“What’s your Book about?” they would ask.

And I would say: “Well, the main character, God, so loves this messed-up world that He does the unthinkable: He sends His only Son as a gift-offering to die a painful death for a world sitting on the ragged brink of disaster. And if these people believe in the story’s protagonist, they will never die. The hero will spare them from death.”

I stare at the verses on onion-skin pages. And I look at the one … single … word.

So.

Outside, the Creator sends another day. Do I ever really notice? Is the “so” I say, most often this one: So what?

Outside the bluish morning light sends darkness scampering. Snow blushes pink.

I click at the keyboard, and Google “Bible commentaries on John 3:16.”

I want to know about the “so love.” But can I ever really comprehend the depth of that love — limitless, infinite, sacrificial?

I find a piece of the answer. The commentators say the Greek word is this: houtos. The commentators say that rarely do the Bible’s authors use this one word – houtos – to convey deep emotion.

But here, God moved the pen strokes like this: οὕτως

So = οὕτως.

“He has put an eternity of meaning in the particle, οὕτως, so, and left a subject for everlasting contemplation, wonder, and praise, to angels and to men.”– Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible

I write the world houtos in the margin of my Bible.

He houtos loves me because He houtos loves me. I’ve got a mind to live this day like I so believe that.

I jab a finger at the letters carved into the back of the wooden kitchen chair:
A N N A.

Anna’s older sister chimes in first, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect. “I recognize those backwards Ns anywhere,” she says.

Anna’s fork falls with a guilty clink on the plate. She buries her face in her palms, as if she might squeeze her whole self behind her hands if she presses hard enough.

I trap my tongue behind clenched teeth. Hush, Jennifer. You’ll regret what you’re about to say. I can see the red of shame rising in her cheeks, behind a camouflage of fingers.

I had pledged that I’d never yell over a child’s error or misbehavior. Furthermore, I had actually acknowledge weeks earlier that I found beauty in the unintentional etchings of this wooden kitchen table.

This pine rectangle is a tableau of life with its nicks and scrapes and grooves. I’ve run my fingers along the wood, like a memory-Braille. In the golden slant of sunlight, I find a grandfather’s check marks, which he inadvertently carved with his firm handwriting. He’s gone now.

I touch deep-grooved tine points. They were banged in by a toddler; it was her first time with a “big-people fork.”

I run a finger along that one long scratch. It was an accidental souvenir left by a visiting missionary’s laptop.

And now this: Anna’s name carved in half-inch tall letters on the back of the chair.

She is shuddering behind her hands. I peel her palms back and lift her onto my lap, ladling her body. She shakes. Shame runs fluid down her cheeks.

But sometimes, my heart forgets to inform my brain of my good intentions.

That’s what had happened that morning, just after the mellow morning sun pooled on my kitchen table. The phone rang, and it was Sandy. She’s one of those rare souls in my life whose whole being seems fully directed toward the spontaneous act, the random lunch, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants whim.

I let the phone ring four times before answering, because you never know what you might agree to when Sandy calls. But I answered, and sure enough, she had another idea. Could we go to the nursing home to play Bingo?

I let out my air in one long breath. I looked at my planning-calendar. How could I cram another thing into the little box assigned for the day? It was already pencil-scratched clear full with all of my “to-do.”

She interrupted the quiet space between us. “Jennifer, It’s OK, truly.”

“I’m so sorry …” I said, and the phone went back on the cradle.

***

In the silence,  I stared at the little calendar box for a long time, this box that neatly framed all of my duties. I tapped the square with the end of my pencil.

Yep. I had put God in a box again. I do that. A lot.

I treat life like a list of things “to-do,” instead of a “to-be” list. I am too often a human doing, instead of human being. I am a planner. I live life afraid that the spontaneous act will derail my well-laid plans.

I lifted the phone off the cradle. Maybe I could play after all,  I told her.

“Be there at 2 p.m.,” she said.

***

The room was dappled in sunlight, reflecting off wheelchair-chrome and a mylar “Happy Birthday” balloon. One of the women was celebrating her 96th year on Earth. Tables were set with fake daffodils in slender white vases. I grabbed a Bingo card and found a seat by a sweet lady named Katherine.

Sandy was already there, calling Bingo numbers into the microphone.

“B-16. Does anyone have B-16?” she asked.

A wide grin spread across the face of a wizened woman who bellowed: “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!” Her shoulders shook as she laughed.

“B-18,” Sandy called out. “B-18. Anybody remember when you were 18?”

Katherine’s age-spotted hand shot into the air. “I do!” she shouted from her wheelchair: “I remember!”

Sandy asked into the microphone: “What would you do if you were 18 again, Katherine?”

Katherine’s eyes widened. She didn’t hesitate: “I’d pick more daisies,” she said. “And I’d dance barefoot in the rain, and I’d fish with a worm.”

Katherine tossed her head back with laughter.

I’ll need to remember this, I thought as I watched her, with my chin resting in my hands. I want to make room for who I want to be:

I want to be a dancer. I want to be a daisy picker. I want to laugh more, laugh fuller. I want to be courageous. I want to be Jesus to a stranger.

What if — for the rest of my life – I awoke each morning focused less on what I could do, and more on who God is asking me to be?

I wonder, if maybe, I might wake up to find a sweet surprise on my spiral-bound planning calendar. I wonder if I might find room, just outside the box.

As usual, the moment wasn’t strung in lights or wrapped in shiny paper. I didn’t find it under a prelit tree, or at a big-box store or out on the Information Superhighway.

Rather, I found Christmas just off a quiet country road near my home in Iowa.

It was a cold December morning. I do remember that. And we were huddled inside a ramshackle shed on an old farmstead about a mile from our little country church. We moms had driven our costumed children here for a Christmas pageant photo shoot. It was the coldest day of the season so far, but this was the day we’d arranged to take photos inside a makeshift stable, so we moved quickly.

Racing against the cold, we posed a shivering assembly of wee angels, shepherds and two reticent teenagers—Mary and Joseph—near the crèche.

Our boys were dressed in old bed-sheets, and our girls wore glittery wings pinned to the backs of white dresses. One shepherd insisted on holding a blue Matchbox car, and we could see the words on my daughter’s sweatshirt peeking through her stained, white gown.

We shivered, under the bite of a 15-degree day. We had to hurry before the three-year-olds in threadbare bed sheets lost patience, or turned blue. We posed our children, and gave orders for them to pleeeee-ase stand still so we could all go home soon.

And right then and there—in a rickety old shed, on a blustery December day—it happened: Christmas showed up.

It was that sort of moment when you forget about the bitter cold; when sunlight streams in perfectly to lighten up dark corners; when flaws and stains don’t seem so big anymore; when you discover that peace can enter unexpectedly, and life’s burdens seem lighter, and you forget—all at once—the ugly rancor of the world around you.

This is Christmas.

It was there, close to gritty Iowa dirt, where I watched as Christmas made its entrance—simple and unadorned when the nativity came to life in a ramshackle barn.

And for me, that’s the way Christmas always shows up, in the unadorned places. 

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a farming community. Maybe it’s because I’ve always brushed closest to Heaven in places where I could dig toes into farm dirt.

But even if you’re living in the city, you might know what I mean. Because as children of God, we’re formed from dust. Our Savior was born in a barn, of all places.  

For many of us as Midwesterners—city and country folks alike—our pasts are rooted in rural places. And, as each Christmas draws near, we long to return to traditions that were born in simpler times.

It looks and sounds and feels like this:

Re-sewn bed-sheets on four-foot-tall shepherds; brown-paper goody-bags full of peanuts and fruit; a pillow-enhanced neighbor who plays Santa at the Kiwanis Pancake Feed; Christmas carolers harmonizing in the hallways of the local nursing home; darkened sanctuaries full of old friends who, under tall steeples, hold candles and sing “Silent Night” with the fresh sting of tears in their eyes.

Christmas grew from seeds of simplicity, not in palaces or high-rises. So, then, we find hope descending on an uncomplicated place like a rundown barn during a Christmas photo-shoot.

That’s where I found Christmas that year, anyhow—simply and unexpectedly in a ramshackle shed on a cold December day. No blinking lights or fancy wrapping or four-star accommodations. I huddled under that roof, feet tethered to Earth, while brushing up against the hope of something bigger than myself.