And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. Luke 2:7

I slept a full eight hours last night for the first time in so many months that I can’t even remember when it last happened. This has been a year full of triumphs, victories, and amazing redemption. It has also been a year of near-miss disaster.

What a roller coaster ride! It seems before we could even take in the panoramic view from the peak of celebration an onslaught of attack, loss, pain, and fog-like chaos would hit so hard the deep plunge left us all in a state of brokenness where sleep seems to hide under someone else' covers.

For example, our orphan-food crisis. The savage drought escalated the price of food in Sudan higher than anyone could have predicted. The mountain peak: God heard our prayers, and your amazing response provided all the funds we needed! The plunge: Then, every door we knocked on slammed shut; we couldn’t buy the food—at any price. The mountain peak: after weeks of back-breaking work, we found a restaurant supplier in Nairobi who sold us the food and agreed to transport it. The plunge: the new government of the Republic of Sudan refused our tax exemption, and wanted to tax our food up to as much as we had paid for it! The mountain peak: Lual Atak banged on every politicians’ door, refusing to leave, and with the help of prayers from every corner of our world, finally, he was granted the exemption we needed. The mountain peak: our trucks rolled out of Nairobi with a year’s supply of food. The plunge: while the one headed for Hope for Sudan made it without a glitch. The four headed 1,000 miles farther north to New Life Ministry have been pummeled at every juncture. Two finally made it safely there a few days ago. The third sat broken down for more than a week just shy of the border in Kenya. The fourth was to remain with the third one (the one broken down) so that none of the drivers traveled alone. However, the fourth driver abandoned the third, and then the fourth driver (and truck) disappeared. The mountain peak: the broken one is repaired and on the road again. The plunge: the Kenyan police found our fourth truck, but the container of food had been taken from the truck bed. They cannot find the driver or the food. The mountain peak: we had only paid 75% to the supplier up front. Since the supplier is responsible for his driver breaking the agreement and abandoning the broken down truck, if the supplier does not find and deliver that last truck of our food we are not bound to pay for the portion he lost; which means the finances balance out. The plunge: we’ll have to go back to shopping all over again for the last 25% of our food.

And that is only the food crisis roller coaster; there's been so many more…

I’ll borrow from a message Matt McGowen, our Sr. Field Coordinate shared in a recent reflection upon a John Eldredge quote from the book Fathered by God. Matt begins with the Eldredge quote, “‘As I said before, what the evil one does to a good warrior - if he cannot take him out, cannot keep him from entering the battle at all - is to bury him.  Dog pile. Make it all about battle. Make it constant, one battle after another...’

Then Matt shares his own thoughts on the Eldredge quote, “This speaks not only for me personally but also for the way we’re all being hit.  These have been heavy days.  If evil's plan A is to try to keep us from the battle then his plan B is to lay so much battle on us that we get buried and take no rest and lose all joy.”

Rest finally came to me last night. Perhaps, I finally allowed it to enter. And with it, joy returned through the wonder of a dream I had. In the dream, it’s as if my eyes were a camera lens.

The lens is first set to a wide panoramic view. The scene before me is a barn. All that is in the barn is a manger. The Christ Child is in the manger, but there is no Mary, Joseph, or shepherds...not even an animal stirs in the barn. Just the Christ Child wrapped in His swaddling cloths, and laid on top of a bed of straw tucked down inside a manger.

As my eyes focus, the “lens” zooms in so closely I see nothing of the barn scene, except the manger. But the focus is not the manger or even the Christ Child. What the spotlight illuminates is the straw.

In the dream I realized that I had limited my understanding of Christ’s coming to earth in such an impoverished station of life only to show us that His power did not come from material wealth, but rather from His heart and spirit. While that is true, the dream was showing me how God is in the details. He could have chosen many forms of poverty to show us that, but He chose specifically to place His son in a manger where a bed of hay or straw would be His first place of abiding.

Upon waking this morning, I pulled out Milton’s commentaries and did several internet searches on hay or straw. Here’s the bottom line of what I found, “Straw: hollowed out, easily broken, dried and threshed wheat often used as fodder…when used as an adjective it is often used to describe something as a sham or fictitious.”


Christ’s first dwelling place was in a bed that would normally hold straw. From the moment of His birth He seems to be telling us, “I desire to live in your dryness, your brokenness. I will use the very sham of your life as fodder to bring about My new Life in you.”

Next in the dream, the spotlight shifted to the manger. Instantly, I realized a manger is a place for food…a place of nourishment. The very first moments of Christ’s life on this earth pointed to what was to come. His very first dwelling place was a manger, a place for food. From the beginning moments of His life He showed us what, one day to come, He would speak during some of His final moments of life, “Take. Eat my body. Drink my blood.”

I awakened with Jesus’ words on my mind, “Let the children come to me.” I laid tucked under the covers wondering how, similarly to how I'd overlooked the message of the straw and manger of Christ, I might have also overlooked the details of the lives of the orphans we save and serve. What do the details of their lives tell me of what is to come? What are those details pointing me to today?

God is the Greatest Story Teller ever, and He speaks to us in the details of our lives—and those who He places before us. It takes patience and practice to become a skilled listener, observing and discerning the details of His Story, and how He lives it through us and others, especially children.

I invite you to sit at the manger for the following four minutes asking God to reveal more details of the Story He invites you into as you study the lives, stories, and faces of our children in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-cbnhBRstY

May you see the manger and all its contents in ways you’ve never noticed before,
k