Hope Bringers

Hope Bringers

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

“Mom, Shiloh is living in the Gateway hotel.”

My heart broke at Jonny’s words. I knew that hotel from my law-clerking days when I worked for a local judge. Nothing good happens there, especially for kids. Shiloh and Jonny are roughly the same age, and while Jonny doesn’t know her well, he knows part of her story.

I was unprepared to help my children navigate relationships with peers walking through impossibly hard circumstances. The death of a parent, divorce, the messy aftermath of divorce, foster care, homelessness, adoption, childhood cancer: the issues facing my children’s peers are as hard and real as life gets, and I often find myself at a loss as I consider what the kids in the vicinity of my children are facing. But I’ve begun to realize that God has placed my children in circles that are different from mine, and they are sent into this broken world to be “hope bringers” in places and spaces I cannot walk. They have unique relationships with their peers that I will never have. And so I have to equip them with the tools to be hope bringers.

When Lizzie or Jonny tells me the hard story of a neighbor, teammate, or schoolmate, my momma heart aches as I ask the question: “Why might God have put the two of you in the same sphere? Why might you have found out about this information?”

Aaron and I have empowered our kids to be hope bringers, people who reveal the love of God twice as much through their actions as they do through their words. We equip them with the power of prayer—sending them out to be pray-ers over their schoolmates, classmates, and friends. God often deploys his people to the brokenhearted and the crushed as tangible love and help, and I’m learning that he deploys our children to do the same if we’ve raised them to be hope bringers.

— Julie

— Today’s Act of Friendship —

Equip the children in your life to be hope bringers through kindness and prayer. Help them practice the art of verbalized prayer (even secretly) and remind them to look for ways to show kindness.