Daze 7:Special Purposes for Korona Kids

So we're staying home now, as we hope you are too. As a result, there seems to be more time with our family across the street. Twin grandsons Ethan and Isaac (14) and Joshua (10) are a joy to our hearts and mom Jenny is a treasure. Besides sharing meals together in the evening, every weekday morning the last couple weeks we've been playing the game of Catan. It's a highly strategic game requiring planning how to use resources to build roads, settlements and cities. I'm loving this time every day. I look forward to their arrival every morning at 10, before they head back to school work.

Beyond this, I think it's a time they'll look back on all their lives--a time to be alive as kids during the pandemic that swept the world, that started in China and made its way to the US. They also began and were conceived in China and arrived in the US 14 years ago to be born Americans. Jenny arrived six months pregnant with the boys and Chinese dad, Jack.  So it's fascinating watching all the China connections.

Then thinking about Acts 17:26 and how ALL this time is given us to as a gift. He MARKED OUT the exact time in history we would live....and the boundaries of where we each would live. And those boundaries for now are right around the house across the street. Such a beautiful story. We moved here 7 years ago. Six months later, Jenny and Jack decided to move back to the states after 3 years in China. We looked for a house for them to rent near us, but found none. One day I noticed the older man across the street put a For Sale sign up in his yard. I went over and asked if he'd be willing to rent, but he said no, they were moving to Florida. So Bill and I looked at resources and figured out a way to help Jenny purchase the house. The rest is history. Our amazing church family helped clean the place out, paint, and get new flooring. Now they have made it their own.

Now, 7 years later, the corona virus has made them Korona Kids who will one day look back at this time and place as a gift from our Heavenly Father. It's been a gift to be together and walk through all the challenges of this time confined at home, bound together. Now 7 years later we are still trusting God for this part of the journey, that it's part of His great plan and purposes. We know that Jesus set the pattern for how to live in difficult times and my hope is to live as He did, to love God with all my heart and soul, and my neighbors as myself.

 I've never done a poem about kids, but here's a first draft based on Acts 17:26.

Korona Kids

Acts 17:26:  From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

Korona kids are special,

            Born to see this day.

They didn’t choose or make it so,

            But God chose it this way,

            So they would seek Him and pray.

They don’t know just how special,

            They only think it strange.

To see the world as we know it,

            Go through this mighty change.

            But God’s ways have a wider range!

They didn’t choose this place to live,

            They didn’t choose this time.

But God chose them and made it so,

            So they would upward climb,

            To live in God’s great prime.

One day they’ll know they’re special,

            They’ll look back in greatest awe.

To know they once lived through this time,

            It was not fluke or flaw,

            But was God’s own eternal draw.