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Monday, December 27, 2004 Volume VI Number 52
by Ken Kemp
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here are so many things I’d like to tell you about as the year 2004 comes to a close. |
I’d like to tell you about my niece and nephew, two recently married young people now teaching English to classrooms full of eager Afghans emerging from a closed society, ravaged by decades of war, awakening to the dawn of a new era, curious about the West, and these two young westerners who live in their neighborhood and who put up a little Christmas tree in their living room with a sign that says “For Unto Us a Child is Born.”
I’d like to tell you about a heart-felt conversation with a seventeen year old niece, a beautiful young woman who shares my last name. She just this week returned from St. Petersburg in Russia. Along with her Mom and Dad of seven years, she visited the home where she once lived in the big city with other children who, for a laundry list of mostly unhappy reasons, did not enjoy the benefit of a mother or a father who would/could support and love them. She told me about some of the friends she knew from the home as a little girl, finding them now that they’ve all grown up some, and several of the conversations she had, and some of the things she learned about her past. I remember when English was a distant, foreign language for Masha. Today, you hardly notice any trace of Russian when she speaks. We wept together for a little while over the hardships she saw first hand. Then we turned around and she introduced me to the ten-year-old girl she and her mom and dad brought home with them. Vera. “This is Uncle Ken,” she said. Vera - all giggles and smiles, a little pig-tailed princess who speaks no English. We hugged all around and laughed again at the wonder of if all, wiping away some of the tears. Thanks to the Russian courts and an agency that does this sort of thing, the new little girl is now her adopted sister, and a card-carrying member of our extended family. As of this Christmas, all three of us share the same last name.
I’d like to tell you about Christmas Eve and a full church by the lights and ribbons and Christmas greens and the families all together crowded in a packed Sanctuary standing and singing carols and celebrating the arrival of the Christ child and the good news which shall be to all people and the little girls in red ribbons and bows and the little boys scrubbed and wide-eyed and the moms and the dads holding little ones in their arms and the grandmas and grandpas looking down the row at the people who fill their lives with joy and meaning and purpose and the musicians filling the room with the sweet strains of Christmas Eve and me – well, I got so filled up with joy I could barely contain it, just knowing that in God’s good grace, I’m now one of the pastors in this place.
I’d like to tell you about emerging from the bus depot in down-town Seattle and a Christmas week reunion with my son and walking up Capital Hill to his apartment, one suitcase and a backpack in tow. Parked at the curb was a one-way rental truck - empty. That afternoon we loaded it up with everything he and his new wife possess. After a farewell meal (his farewell to the city he called home this past year) at a local Pub, we slept on the hardwood floor of an empty room, and then finished off the packing at about three thirty the next morning. We were rolling by five. For two days, we traveled south together, and talked – we covered just about every subject a dad and his son could. He’s become a man. A good man.
I’d like to tell you about the friendship our daughter, now a devoted Mom, has with a woman nearly fifteen years older than she who wants deeply to become a Mom herself. I’d like to tell you more about the adjustment in the transition from business to ministry, and how I lay awake at night, not wondering what my future will be, but thinking and planning and anticipating a whole new set of energizing possibilities. I want to tell you about all the interesting, committed people I’m coming to know – and how there just isn’t enough time during the day to see them all. I want to tell you about the telephone call from my eighty-eight year old mentor who seemed to possess as much joy over this whole transition as me. We laughed together over God’s goodness. He’s no stranger to this level of joy.
So many things to tell you.
But then, there’s hardly enough time.
Mainly, I just want to tell you that the year 2004 has God’s fingerprints all over it.
* * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader. You’ve been reflecting, too.
Another year comes to a close. It’s time to review the best of. Go for it.
Imagine your world through the eyes of a little Russian girl who knows no English. What would she find there?
Enough love to know she’s valued. Enough hope to know there is a future waiting. Enough laughter to fill the empty places with joy.
Masha’s learning that the abundance of affluence is nice – but it’s not all there is.
It’s family. It’s caring. It’s giving. It’s listening. It’s holding.
It’s knowing there is a good God who knows my name.
That I have a place to call home.
Come to think of it, I do.
And so do you.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004
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