4,265 Miles

Yesterday, Vivien was eating lunch and pointed to the picture of "Jenny" on our fridge and said quite matter-of-factly "I want to go see Jenny."  

A lump formed in my throat as I whispered my reply, "So do I, baby girl.  So do I."

I want to go see Jenny.

A few days prior, in the calm, quiet hour of 5am, I was reading Psalm 8.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (verses 3 & 4, NIV)

Stargazers

In our house, we have a fascination with the vastness of the universe and the astronomical time and space mysteries that mankind is just too small to figure out.  Galaxies go on literally for ever and the starlight we see in the sky this very evening was emitted from a celestial being that burned out and died a lifetime ago!

So where does God fit in all this?  Over the past half-century, mankind has traveled quite literally to the ends of our galaxy and beyond.  Voyager 1 was launched over 40 years ago and is currently over 13 billion miles away from the earth.  And it's still going!    And it's still sending data back to us!

What feels like a world away is actually just in the palm of His hands.

Jenny is currently ~4,265 miles away from her forever family.  Compared to 13 billion, this doesn't seem like much.  But to us it feels like a chasm. 

We pray for Jenny everyday.  And I'll admit:  some days I feel like David in Psalm 8.  Who are we, and who is Jenny, that God is mindful of us?  There's a lot of crappy things going on in the world.  Big, crappy things.  Things that should take God's attention away from the Etter family, their immigration paperwork, and their medical insurance logistics.   I wouldn't blame God for not having us or Jenny at the top of his priority list.

But our God is bigger.  Bigger than all the big, crappy things that are happening in the world.  Bigger than the natural disasters and the depravity of mankind.  And so we still pray.  We pray because Jesus said in John 16:24b, "Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete."  We pray because he hasn't forgotten us.  And most importantly, he hasn't forgotten Jenny. 

And someday soon, when we tuck Vivien into bed and she says "We go in the airplane to get Jenny!" (as she does almost every night) we'll be able to answer her with "Yes!" 

And we will.