The very first foster child who came to live with us was a five year old girl who had come from a shelter after being taken from her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Victoria and I walked upstairs to her room and she turned to me and said, “Is this where the good people live?”

I answered, “Yes. How did you know?” “Because there aren’t any bars on the windows”, she said.

That was my first glimpse of the world from which she had come. I didn’t know what to do with the glimpse, but I was sure that Victoria was perceptive and probably damaged in ways I couldn’t imagine.

When God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, he was working with a people who had been enslaved for the larger part of four hundred years. They were a damaged people, and a perceptive people who remembered the God of their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac , and Jacob. The Exodus was an enormous struggle, but with God’s orchestration through Moses, the goal of finding a peaceful home was accomplished in forty years. It lasted for a whole generation, and off and on after that.

When Victoria came to our home I knew that I had no skills whatever for dealing with this little girl’s history. Like Moses, (Exodus 3:11, 4:10-11) I “told” the Lord that I had no skills, no understanding or techniques,. Nevertheless, I didn’t return her to Children’s Protective Services.

The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. ( Exodus 3:7-8)

God’s words are full of promise and anticipation. To Moses God revealed his deepest self and intention in regard to a people who hadn’t heard from Him in several generations. His intent was to make a place and take them there where they would become “the good people” to whom would be born God’s own son.

Victoria knew that there are “good people” somewhere who lived in peace enough not to have bars on their windows. She didn’t know that her biological father would arrive to accept custody and take her home to his new family. I recently learned that Victoria is now a mother herself, and is living where “the good people” live.

Love in Him,

Prue