We’ve been in our new house for a month now, and no matter where we look, my wife Felida and I can’t find our silverware. Losing something you need or value is a hazard of moving.   One year when we moved from Sedona to Tucson, the movers packed our printer in the wrong box and we couldn’t find it for six months. And this time it’s the silverware; for three weeks we used plastic forks, knives and spoons at every meal until my wife gave in and bought a cheap set of tableware from the dollar store. If we’re lucky, we’ll find what we’ve lost before we move from this house again. 

And as a sign that God was with them, Isaiah spoke of a sign, a symbol of hope, an assurance of God’s promise that God is always with us, even when things are awful or scary. That sign, that symbol, was the birth of a child. Someone was pregnant, and with the birth of her child, hope would come anew into the world. 

When it rains, it pours.  Last week, my wife Felida was looking on her Facebook page when she saw that her cousins in the Philippines were stranded on the second floor of their home during a terrible flood.  They had small children with them and were using Facebook to call for help.  Nobody could get to them, but thankfully the waters receded by the next day and they were okay. Last week, three separate typhoons hit the Philippines in succession, and so the Manilla area flooded.  This is nothing new, just as hurricanes are nothing new on the East Coast and Gulf Coast of the United States.  In fact, Filipino homes used to be built on stilts so that they could stay above water when the floodwaters came.  They aren’t built that way anymore, so residents know to just keep their heads above water and survive.

Apple is a rescue dog. At ten months old, she was a pregnant and homeless teenager. There was no room in the inn, so she was sent to the Nogales shelter, where she was deemed undesirable (they thought she was a pit bull and would be difficult to place). So Apple was scheduled to be euthanized, her short life almost over before it began. Then good things began to happen for Apple. A woman who runs a private animal rescue visited the shelter and saw something in Apple, saw that she’s a cattle dog with a good heart and a lot to give. And so Apple was taken to a foster home in Hereford, where she gave birth to three puppies, though she was still a puppy herself.