I’m sitting in our living room. Bags packed, leaving for the airport in 3 hours. Our family will be returning to the US, then driving up to Canada to visit my mom. She has cancer treatments next week, and I’m hoping to spend some quality time with her, and help anyway we can.

Brent will also be returning to re-start his life in the US after staying with us for 8 months following his health crisis. He is doing really well, body, soul and spirit. He’s off all of his meds, been spared from any relapses, which is a very good sign. It’s been a tough road for him, a deep formational valley for sure. God’s mercy has been so abundant and sustaining over us all. So grateful for Olena who provided timely therapy, and for the prayer over his life! He’s grown close to the younger kids, like a re-introduced brother. We’ll miss his kindness and help going to the store for us for milk and eggs, seemingly daily.

Deb will be flying down to Florida for a family wedding with Claire while I stay with my mom. Abigail is excited to visit and stay with her big sister Bronwyn in the Rochester area.

Broderic and Kristin will be remaining in Cluj. They can’t actually leave because their kids aren’t technically re-united to their visas, which actually have expired (so confusing!). They actually need a bit of a miracle to stay, they don’t have any visa paths as of yet, and have only 60 days or so before they need one submitted and approved in the system.

Our biggest prayer is also for a legal pathway to remain in Romania as our volunteer pathways have been exhausted. Our visas expire tomorrow. So we’ll return to Romania end of May with the hopes of seeing God’s hand at work, opening necessary doors, and closing the ones that need to be closed. We are praying for His will to be done, and learning to find that deep rest once again in the places of uncertainty. It’s been almost 3 years, in reality, of being unsure where we’re supposed to be as our world has shifted beneath our feet, first from war, then with Brent, and now with my mom’s difficult cancer situation.

Sometimes the heart wants to be in more places than it can be. Lord, we ask for your guidance, and provision to remain in the spaces and places you want us to be.. hopefully growing, and learning what you want to teach us. We love you, Jesus, and are grateful for your steady hand in the shadows. Lead us to the green pastures and by your mercy, continue to restore .

Last week a group of us ventured through several regions and villages of Ukraine, visiting our volunteer partners that serve the widow. Here is my update – click here

Every one of us enjoys feeling welcome and at home. Hospitality is a spiritual grace, a gift from the holy spirit to be experienced whenever, and wherever Jesus people are present.

Churches often regard hospitality in the context of the Sunday gathering. They ask, “Do people feel welcome at our church event?” They place smiling greeters at the door and provide valuable instructions for those first-time visitors who aren’t sure where to go. But is this the essence of hospitality?

Hospitality is first found in the genesis of creation. God, the Gardner creates place, and space, and welcomes life into a place of sustainable flourishing. We belong here, and we know it. Yet, in our fallen state, humanity has adopted a theology of scarcity, believing the best route to personal fulfillment is to hoard, and even steal resources as if they belong to us.

Joong-Sik Park notes in his essay on hospitality is the primary context for evangelism, within which an authentic evangelism takes place. Yet, not in the sense that many evangelicals would suppose. Rather than seeing welcome as a means to an end, the means of welcome is itself the stage from which the love of Jesus is demonstrated in living color. “The Christian Gospel is the Word become flesh. This is more than and other than the Word become speech” (Niles 1951, 96).

Park says, “The whole life of Jesus was that of hospitality”, and as Pohl states, “Jesus gave his life so that persons could be welcomed into the Kingdom” (1999, 29). If God’s own creation wasn’t enough to reveal his heart toward us, Christ in the incarnation makes it crystal clear; we are a loved creation, and the Creator has done everything to welcome us back home.

“In Christian hospitality, the ultimate host is Christ, says Park, and we, as believers, are welcoming neighbors to the table of Christ’s resources, as we together “come as equals” (Pohl 1999, 158).

We, as a family, love to entertain, create space, and allow for human connections in our fragmented, and disconnected world. What we’re learning, however, is that to offer food, and a warm atmosphere is just the beginning of the sacred liturgy that is hospitality. We must incarnate this loving attribute by entering the lives of others and offering ours. It’s one thing to open a door and welcome someone in, it’s quite another to open the heart.

As the weather warms, Deb and I are resuming our walks. It hasn’t rained in a few weeks and the paths are looking quite weathered. I found the cracks interesting, the outer crusty layers breaking open. It’s as if the earth below is preparing to receive, opening up for the coming spring rains.

I’ve been enjoying a season of comfort, and increasing peace. Despite the challenges of carrying Brent through this past year, the ongoing atrophy of a war that continues to hurt those we care about, and processing my mom’s cancer diagnosis, hope is emerging again in the depths of our soul.

Outwardly, I think I still look like this cracking dirt.

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;

    the desert shall rejoice and blossom;

Here is your God…. He will come and save you

Isaiah 35:1,4

When Jesus came, he brought heaven’s rain upon the arid hearts of humanity. The thirsty, they will drink, and be made new again. Today, God’s Spirit is our promise. We are filled, and strengthened. Though we are weighed down, sometimes with burdens beyond our abilities to bear, I’m grateful for the hope in the coming rains.

I’m not yet blossoming, I still hurt. I’m not quite rejoicing, I still grieve. Yet, my heart is open to the kindness and mercy of my God. Fill us, Lord, we who are parched, thirsty, and opening up to you today.