Feb. 1, 2008

Fresh Light

Dear Friends,

In December our world tuned white.    It was a welcome change after a couple winters with very little snow.   When Simeon saw the amount of snow that came down overnight he screeched with joy.    Later he said, 'snow is a child's paradise'. 

            Simeon turns 5 in a couple days and has just begun to go to a preschool class one day a week.    With the snow he has been able to be pulled in his sled.   Monica and I feel like we are hitting new bench posts in our life together watching our little boys grow up so fast.  Abram is repeating everything anyone says.   He has little jokes with Simeon now too.  He picked up the phrase, 'Jonah where are you?', and knows that Simeon will laugh no matter how many times he says it.  Monica has posted some video clips of Abram singing out of a children's dinner prayer book.  (www.monicaklepac.blogspot.com)

            Recently we said goodbye to the MacAvaddy family who worked with us for 2 years.    Simeon had to say goodbye to his best friend Gavin.   Do pray for him as he deals with sadness over missing Gavin and that he would make more Romanian friends his age.    We are hoping that the preschool will help him feel more comfortable with Romanian.  

            One of the kids at the center asked me yesterday during the art time, 'do you like your life?'   It was a strange question coming out of the child's mouth.   I think they were wondering at how anyone could spend all their time teaching and making art.   Maybe I am the only adult male they ever saw with art brushes in his hands and trying to get kids to make noses.   The answer was easy and reaffirming, 'yes I love my life', 'I love being with you kids and I love making art'.   I didn't say that they do often drive me crazy and push me to the edge, but it didn't make my answer less true.    As well as teaching the kids, over the holidays I was able to show two paintings in a group exhibition in the art guild gallery.    

            Six inches of snow made all the sidewalk cracks disappear, all the grey turned to white.     The trees grew thick frost, turning black limbs to shimmering white.   We wrestled the kids into their long underwear, snow pants hats coats and gloves.   Abram was hoisted onto my shoulders and Simeon pulled in the sled behind Monica and I.    The black crows, black cats, and black dogs were like construction paper cut outs against the snow.   As we walked together I thought for a moment on the New Creation.    Even as we are new creations in Christ, so the whole world, its raw materials will all be transformed be made new.   In some ways the same trees, dogs, and forms, but transformed as the snow transforms the landscape, recognizable but yet totally new, clean, and pure.    The cross on top of our church, usually black was frost clothed a perfect white.   Christ has conquered death and pierced the darkness of winter with fresh light.

 

In Christ,

Joel Klepac