It didn’t really start with a tiny house, our new life. But I have to admit, the whole tiny house thing did give our new life a kick start. I say our new life because it was just a year ago that Jim retired from a life of vocational ministry, primarily teaching in the Seminary classroom and on-line.

Family issues served to distract us much of the first 2/3rds of 2017. Then came the tiny house adventure, and we began to look at life much more closely. We had learned once again that we surely did not need all the stuff we had accumulated over the first fifty years of our married life.

Some of you followed us as we started downsizing, attempting to move on 25 items a week to new homes. I must admit it was a very big step when the bunk beds went to new homes. Then this last week the guest room bed moved into our room when our bed finally gave up the ghost. But it feels good, this lightening up thing.

As Jim shed one title at Summit University, he assumed another one this fall as interim pastor at Windham Summit Bible Church and I haven’t seen him this happy in a long while. Isn’t it strange, or maybe God’s plan all along, how lightening up or getting rid of some stuff makes room for other things. In our case, it feels like much better things.

If Jim were reading this over my shoulder, he would say, “So what’s the point? What are you getting at?”

Well, I am getting at ‘divine coincidences.” One of the things I do is review books and serve on the launch team for new authors or new books of established writers. Very recently I was invited to be on the launch team for Nick Vujicic’s new book Being the Hands and Feet: Living Out God’s Love for All His Children to be released in hardcover and Kindle February 13, 2018.

Let me quote a line from his page on Amazon, “New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned motivational speaker Nick Vujicic is known worldwide as the man without arms and legs who personifies a “can do” spirit.”

But he’s way more than a limbless man. He’s a husband and father: identical twin daughters were born to Nick and his wife Kanae December 20 joining their big brother. He’s also an evangelist and writer. Check him  and his other books out on Amazon.

But today I want to talk about one thing Nick wrote about in his most recent book, Being the Hands and Feet: Living Out God’s Love for All His Children,  kids without “forever homes.” I have heard that term used in reference to finding homes for dogs and cats in the pound. Animal lovers work hard at trying to find new homes for these animals, forever homes. But as Nick reminds us, God says “pure religion and undefiled is to remember widows and orphans…to visit them in their affliction,” James 1:27 and I don’t think visit means just stop by.

We are called to love one another, and I am not sure that just stopping by widows and fatherless children is all that loving. Vujicic talks about the, I’m going to call it the mission field, ministry of adoption or care of children needing whole and healthy families.

Honestly I don’t know what our role, Jim’s and mine,  in that ministry might be unless it is to make others aware of the ministry of adoption and foster care. I can’t get those kids in single parent homes or without responsible or capable parents out of my mind today. It kind of feels like Nick’s words have ignited some embers, and I’m kind of excited to see where it leads for us or the rest of the church.

Meanwhile, there is lots more in Vujicic’s latest book than a challenge to remember orphans and I will tell you about that sometime soon. Just now, my mind is trying to make sense of this new challenge.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Carol Brennan King  

Other books by Nick Vujicic