All Went Still

"We heard gun shots and then all went still," he paused for a minute before continuing, "I knew it was my father." Krum begins his story of the night he lost his father and his life was forever altered. This story also belongs to Coy, Yaht, and Srey Ma, but on this rainy night, it is Krum’s story to tell our small cell group.

Krum had left his father’s side only a matter of hours before these events were seared into his soul. Krum is one of the few who tells of spending time with his father, the man who would take him along to work most days. It is a story that quickly shifts from a faint picture of a man that may have taken time to begin to father in the only way he knew, by equipping his son for survival, to a scene of a boy left with hardly a chance for that (survival).

After his father was murdered, Krum's mother immediately abandoned the children because of the hardships brought on by the tragedy. Yet now Krum must sit before us as he attempts but to scratch the surface of the depth of the story; his story, which is just one of the many stories of the children of Heritage House.

Yes, many may come from some of the same families, but as each tells his story, it is uniquely his own. Each in turn has told of distance, loss, lack, tragedy, offense, rejection, or disappointment. Yet swirling around through every remembrance, they wind their way back from their “beginnings” toward the grace that they have tasted and still daily seek. We hear voices still groping for that hope of His love that they so desperately want to trust in, to believe in.

We are four weeks into doing this study with the children on the "Father Heart of God". As we explore the true heart of Father, so faithful and just, kind and committed, respectable and humble, so real; Lewis and I are finding not only a sweet brokenness and new vulnerability begin to appear among the kids. We are humbled, in our own broken state, not only of any sorrows we may have known which He desires to heal, but humbled in places our own “fathering” or shepherding may need the gentle directive nudge of the Holy Spirit of Grace, to bring correction, refreshing, and restoration.

I am grateful that we are having the opportunity to go through this study with the older children from Heritage House. I know that the Holy Spirit is working in all of us as we seek to be vulnerable and to know the Father's heart. Thank you for praying with us as we journey through this study. The book is full of talk of our destinies in Him, under His loving care, but all of us, as the author points out, like David and Saul, will face disappointments in life where we fail and others fail us. As we ponder those times we need His help to journey on in from here. We must learn to cast off our self -perserving tendancies as David did, lest we seek to "save our lives", only to loose them. We must at that point remember that, " in returning and rest is our salvation and in quietness and trust (alone) is our strength" (Isaiah 30:15)

Therefore, still pressing on toward the goal of the upward calling in Christ, may we resolve to see Him glorified in our lives past, present and future. As hope dawns and He reveals Himself as the quiet waters that He longs to lead us by... to lead Krum by, may we ever be still and in that stillness, may we "hear" the sound of the still small voice beckoning us past death, upward and onward toward new.