Advent Bookends: A Tree for Peter by Kate Seredy

Today small Peter gave Tommy light for light.

Waking up this morning, I found myself in Isaiah 22. Harsh soul scraping words. The wood man was up and pondering the Sermon on the Mount. During the day, I found myself trying to merge these two passages and understand what they mean. Can we be called to both weep and wail and also hold onto hope that those who mourn shall be comforted? 

This evening we stayed home from a community commitment. Something had to give, and unfortunately tonight it was that commitment. Sometimes, big and little bodies need stillness and rest.

Sitting by the fire, I picked up A Tree for Peter and began to read out loud. We finished the book in one sitting. I desperately needed to be reminded that in the midst of tears and trouble all around us we can and should build.  

A Tree for Peter reminds us of the miracle of Christ in the worst of circumstances and reminds us that every community has great capacity to create and build. God is at work in the world and He wants us to be as well. In the midst of mourning, we are to be builders of that which will last. We are to bring His hope, joy, and healing to our hurting world.

And deep down inside him another dream was forming; he was groping for that, to give it to his mother as a surprise. The dream had started while he watched the men who worked on the houses, while he stood listening to the strange men from the city called builders and engineers. They were the ones, he knew, who, with pencils and papers, with hammers and saws and paint, had made the sad, ugly houses into the white castles of his dream. He wanted to be like them; a man who could, with tools build a dream.... 

That was it. Small Peter laughed out loud, because now he had the surprise for his mother, all ready in words. He looked up at her and said, "When I grow up I am going to be a builder." 

She did not answer. She only looked at him and then at Pat. The smile on her face was beautiful to see. It was Pat who broke the smiling silence. "Faith, and what else could he be? He, with his little spade, building castles out of mud and dreaming them full of fine people...."

And small Peter reminds me of Isaiah 58:12
 
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

Be a builder.