Prostest as lament; locating our story in God's

 Like many Americans who are people of faith, we've been pondering a Biblical framework in which the current story fits the big story of God's arc from "in the beginning" Gen 1 to "all things new" Rev 21. That is the daily work of "heeding, pouring, detouring", looking for truth and beauty in the reality we live through, investing our gifts and resources for the good of others, changing our plans to adapt to the constraints of life in time and space. 

This Chameleon was located in a story set in Rwendigo, but Luke re-located him in the icy story of Sago with his Christmas creation.

That's life. And how, we are all wondering, does that look in January 2026?

This morning one of my current reads focused on lament, and it gave me a location for much of what I see in Minnesota. Scott was born in Minneapolis-St.Paul, and his maternal roots come from the Norwegians and Swedes who settled on Minnesota farmland, people of faith and determination, tough and yet understated, who do what needs to be done. So we resonate with the 50 thousand marching in subzero temps to say: something is WRONG. Protest is a mass lament, a naming of broken systems, a resistance to harmful happenings. Lament acknowledges the gap between the goodness of God and the terrors of the world. When that many people lament together, physically, they provide a needed perspective that all is not well.  The Bible is full of people crying out to kings, to judges, to GOD, not accepting the status quo as right just because it's the status quo. Protest, lament, heeding what is happening, naming the sorrows, these are our calling.

And another read reminded me that all power is secondary to the rule of Jesus. Earthly rulers are derivative. Everyone answers eventually to God. There is no place that we are told to obey human governments IF they contradict God's ways. That is why the protests that eventually led to the abolition of slavery were largely located in Christian churches (though to our lasting sorrow, not all churches and not enough). Or why faithful Germans like Dietrich Bonhoffer stood against the holocaust (yesterday's remembrance). No government perfectly aligns with justice and truth, so "just obey" never absolves people of conscience. Current events are NOT as dire as slavery or holocaust, but they still require thoughtful believers to weigh their reaction. To live together, we have to compromise up to a line, and decide where that line is. For many believers, it is abortion. Or revoking citizenship for immigrants, or withholding food from the hungry or healthcare from the old, or other "love thy neighbor as thyself" summaries of the law. So expressing to our government that we expect constitutional protections to be respected by our military, AND by our customs and border patrols and immigration agents, is not ungodly. Pouring into the streets sometimes comes from an outpouring of love.

Lastly, we won't get this right. The quote that keeps coming back to me this week is: "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. " (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago). Every human (even the ICE and BCP agents who fired fatal shots, and the protestors who "impeded" their wishes) contains the imprint of glory, the image of God's goodness. And every human is marred by evil, the evil of their own choices, the evil of their hard stories in a world that doesn't work for their good, and the evil of a malevolence that lurks to harm. No people are only good, or only bad. We try, we detour. We admit our own self-centered self-protective self-justifying hearts, and we forgive the same in others. The platform for this "truth and reconciliation" as Bishop Desmond Tutu showed us can be the family, the community, the legal system, the institutions that connect us. To listen to each other, to call out right and wrong, to choose to restore the threads that bind. 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti were humans who tried to do the right thing from all we can see, yet it cost them their lives. Their killers were humans who possibly believed they had the right to kill anyone who got in their way. Lamenting this state of affairs, holding the policy-makers who led us into this situation of January 2026 to account, and humbly examining our own hearts as we seek to build bridges to others, these are all holy occupations for God's people in any country. We usually ask readers to pray for our teams in Africa, where injustice and death seem more common, where the concentration of power and money in the hands of too few is even more problematic. But we add prayers for America too. Prayer is a real moment, not a platitude, an action of putting the story of life into God's story of good. Re-orienting our priorities, and heeding the next step of pouring love and detouring plans. So let's pray.

Together, we can change the world.

Even ICE can be beautiful . . .

And speaking of prayer . . thanks for those who prayed my ruptured thumb tendon into a new story of surgical repair.

 preop to post op

The scars are incorporated into the story.

Epiphany, an ongoing season of eyes wide open

 'Til the season, of . . . epiphany, which has somehow come to mean a very individual big-idea insight, rather than a conspicuous manifestation of a reality. 

So in deference to the original meaning of the word, this is the season after Christmas, when magi traveled from Iran before it was being bombed, because their careful ongoing eyes-wide-open study of the nighttime sky led them to conclude a once-in-a-lifetime regime change for the known world had been set in motion by a royal birth west towards the Mediterranean. At extreme effort and expense, they mounted a caravan and spent weeks on the road towards a murky destination. And became the tangible moment that Christ's birth story's significance crossed borders, exploded to be relevant to all the nations, not just one.

"Heed" is a key word in this story. The tale starts in motion, because of attention. They had to heed the star-sign. Not everyone notices a new configuration of the galaxy-distant lights. Their awareness of the impending change, their finding a path they had probably never passed over, their questions of a bewildered court, were all active pursuits of opening their vision to new horizons, to the ancient truths taking new forms. 

"Pour" is another, upon arrival they showered Jesus' family with gifts that befit his kingly status. Heeding led to relinquishing. Precious metals, precious products, in an era where the spice trade and the gold trade were the mobile money and banking. These were not given out of an endless fringe of abundance, they were treasures they parted with to honor the occasion. Costly. Bestowed. Entrusted. 

"Detour" is the last key to the story. After heeding led to journey, and pouring led to treasures transferred . .. they were required to react to a changing scenario, to danger, to embrace a new path and plan. As Middle Eastern royal sages themselves, who studied and financed and acted . . they were perhaps more used to being in control than to being redirected. Dream-warnings needed heeding in the end, and they chose to NOT fulfill Herod's expectation of a return report, but to depart a different way.

The frozen river we cross to go to church

These wise humans set a pattern for our own millennia of post-Christmas wait for the baby to reign. 

Eyes open to heeding the ongoing work of God, which is often obscurely messy and disguised at the weakest margins, we begin 2026. Yesterday a long meeting with our leader in Uganda, trying to discern the complications of contradictory interpretations of our tax status, mourning severe illness and loss in friends we've known for decades, weighing out how to be faithful. Then this morning a letter from that team that fills the picture in with lives impacted. Same in Kenya, and Burundi, and all our Area. Very real challenges, and very real goodness. Seeking wisdom to heed God's merciful, true, calling.

From Boas Opedun, in Uganda

So we pour out hours in calls, meetings, emails, documents, payments, agreements and ideas. Not our favorite way to work, but the season's cost nonetheless. Most of our days stretch in an office, with some punctuation of distant meetings we must travel to, or more frequent medical appointments to attend, or family issues to be present for at last. And as we pour out this phase of our lives, we ask others to do the same, raising money for the very similar magi purposes of blessing babies who face danger, by BundiNutrition and Christ School support. 

Scott presenting at a Serge leadership meeting two weeks ago

And detour is the name of the game in 2025, spilling all the way through 2026 too. We wanted to be Area Directors who were present with our 11 teams in 6 countries, controlling our caravan's plans. Instead we are reacting to death threats and finding new paths. As are all at some level. The world spins into 'might makes right' and into the 'wealthiest drain the poorest', with fewer of the restraints that have limited evil through our lifetimes. Adapting to new road blocks and new open doors becomes essential.

    

At the Serge office, sporting the coat Julia made me for Christmas

Epiphany's root is the word "shine". Shine on, display, come into view. A star is best seen in the darkness of night. May Jesus' love, truth, hope, all be best seen in us shining our small lights in 2026.