Blue Skies

The wind is whipping outside my window, causing the bare tree branches to flap around.  It's mid-December, and the weather is finally starting to act like it.  A week until Christmas, and not yet a week from the darkness that seemed to descend...

I'm far away from Conneticut in my office at work yet it seems like it could be my backyard.  Caleb is just up the hill from me, safe and secure in a locked down school with signs on the doors detailing stricter pick-up policies, and although I know in my heart of hearts that right now everything is fine a Mama can't help but wonder.

And Jesus came and was the light of the World, but that light seems to be fading day by day as the TV reports more death and more shooting and more sickness and more hardships.  We wonder why, yet I think of the letter Wallace got from the state department after he prayed at a volleyball game.  I'm thinking about freedom of religion and freedom from oppression, yet why does it feel like it's a bad thing when I speak His name, the most powerful name?  Why should I feel uncomfortable, wondering what others will think?  Oh, Lord... help me show Your light...

And as I'm thinking these dark thoughts and praying for the families of Grace and Noah and Victoria... all 26 families who are facing much darker days than I am... I look out my window, where the gray clouds are rolling. And there, peeking out in the middle of all that gray, blue skies.  Reminding me that even here, in this darkness and worry and fear, in our grief and questioning and hoping that good can come... God is here.  He is our Immanuel, and it is for this very reason that Jesus came to be the Word made flesh to dwell among us, God with us.... to comfort and heal and save, and to defeat death.

"For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace."- Isaiah 9:6