It almost wasn’t beautiful until it was. The plants in an arboretum were plastered against a window, straining for clarity, desperate for light. Just having warm, humid conditions wasn’t enough. Light from one of Edison’s bulbs wasn’t enough either; they wanted more, more light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can relate to those plants. After many years in Thailand, I too have come to prefer light and humidity. Walking through the tropical zone at that arboretum, my bones started to thaw, and most everyone else was starting to sweat. It was almost like being back\u2026I could almost write “back home”, but we don’t know where home is anymore, or at least home this side of heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The few moments of walking through those familiar plants taught me a valuable lesson: I too need to stay plastered to the Light. There are so many distractions, so much darkness, so much sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0<\/strong>When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.\u201d John 8:12<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n We will make another trip to Northwestern for regular scheduled testing on January 20th. Your prayers for us at this time, for our travels and testing results, are truly appreciated. Chris has been sick multiple times over the last six weeks, but has recently recovered without antibiotics. We pray that his cough will resolve and that we can persevere through this season of more illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are very thankful for the Christmas time spent with family and friends. We are also thankful to be back to school and work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris and I both work from home, juggling our respective meetings and responsibilities. His work initiatives continue to take shape and now include supervision of a new staff member. I was asked to join a working group focused on organizational health and wellbeing. We appreciate your prayers as we continue to settle into our roles in this new context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, we ask for your prayers for our missionary friends from Thailand as they return to the US for cancer treatment; our hearts are breaking for them. We may even see them on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lord, thank you for your true light. Help us to stay plastered to you, your truth, your hope, so that your light of life in us will give witness to your loving-kindness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It almost wasn’t beautiful until it was. The plants in an arboretum were plastered against a window, straining for clarity, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hirtfamily.net\/chris\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n