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I went to the last all-school chapel before summer holidays.
I needed to see the students before they left for break, and to take just a moment to tell them what God has been doing over these five months of my illness, my treatment, and their extraordinary prayers.

Because something extraordinary had happened. All around the school.

First, classes throughout the school started taking certain times of the day – different times, so that the whole day was covered; and during that time, no matter what they were doing, the class would stop, and the whole class would take time to pray for me, for my family, for my healing.

Then I heard that in a high school chapel, students had been challenged to step up, to fall on their knees, humble themselves and really get serious with God.
And it happened.
Students went forward for prayer. They wept, and cried out, and repented, and made things right, and asked God what to do – what to do in their own lives, and what to do to help me and my family.

So, the fasting wall was born.

The fasting wall is a bulletin board in the hallway upstairs. The days of the week are listed, and underneath, students anonymously signed up to show that they were fasting and praying on that particular day. They wrote, or left pictures showing how they were fasting, or what they were giving up; for some it is a day of food, for others, their favourite sport, or gaming system, or cell-phone, or ALL media.
On the day I saw it, the wall was almost full, but students were still trying to cram their pictures on the wall.
God was moving.

So, on the last all-school chapel, I wanted to go to the students and tell them that God is listening.
I wanted them to know that He is working.
I wanted them to see that I am alive, and to tell them that my heart is being healed, and renewed, and changed, and restored.
And that my body still needs some work.

Mostly, I think I wanted to thank them for their love, and to commend them for opening their hearts to God.

I wanted them to know that whatever happens to me, God is still GOOD.

I needed to tell them that God is GOOD no matter what. Even if my body dies.

And I wanted to tell them how God has helped me through their prayers.

So, I told them about the vision God had given me a few month earlier. I’ve written about it before. It’s the vision of me and my family settled in the palm of God’s hand. The hurricane winds are blowing all around, and buffeting the earth, but we are safe and secure, because we are in the centre of His hand, and He has surrounded us with a glass cylinder, like a hurricane glass. We know that we are safe, and we are calling to all our friends and family to join us right there, in the glass, in the centre of His will.

And I told them that God had given us the word HOPE, and that day by day He has been showing us how to access the vast depths of His hope in the midst of sickness and sorrow, and hopelessness.
And I said that even when we don’t have any answers, if the question starts with God, the answers don’t really matter anymore.

And that’s all I said. I was pretty choked up by then,and I had promised my children that I would really try not to cry.

The next day,a mother of one of my students came to me and said that she had been in chapel and had heard me speak. She seemed a little teary, and overcome. As I looked at her questioningly, she handed me a gift, and her eyes were wide.
“Sandy, I bought this gift for you at the beginning of the week. I was out with the kids, and we popped into this store, and we decided to buy you a gift just to let you know that we love you, and we are thinking of you and praying for you every day.”
She grabbed my arm, and said, “I bought it BEFORE that chapel.”
I must have looked confused.
“When you open this, you’re going to laugh. It’s a present from God.”
And she said again, “I bought it BEFORE I heard what you said at chapel, and I didn’t really know why I bought it, I just knew I had to buy it for you.”

So, I took it home, but forgot to open it until the next morning.

Bryan wasn’t home, but Nathan and Anna were, so, I gathered them to me, and asked them to help me open the gift. It was in a big white box, filled with rumpled white tissue. I pulled out the gift, and started to unwrap all the tissue layers.

When I was finished, I held this thing in my hands, and looked at it blankly.

“I don’t get it, ” I said.

“I don’t get it either,” said Nathan.

“Me neither,” said Anna.

“She said it was a present from God,” I said.

And then, without knowing why, I began to weep these deep rending sobs from the depths of my heart. I still wasn’t quite sure what I was holding, but I knew it was from God. And then the scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that I was holding a glass cylinder, shaped like a hurricane lamp, and inside was a white feather, still and safe; secure from the buffeting winds all-around.

Two days before she heard about it, Lisa walked into a store, and chose – out of all the items in a very extensive gift shop – a physical manifestation of the vision God had given me months earlier.

And just to blow the top off your head a little more:

The white feather.
The feather was not a part of my vision; I saw my family clearly, and realistically. However, when I first got the news that the cancer had returned, Nathan and Anna were learning Psalm 91. Almost every night, in his prayers, Nathan would say, “Lord you said that you will cover us with your feathers, and under your wing we will find refuge. Lord, we need those feathers to cover us now.”
The feather is for Nathan, and for Anna because they have hidden His word in their hearts, and because the image of sheltering under the wing of God is so powerful for them.
The feather is God, inside with us, comforting us and keeping us warm.

The poem.
While the feather was not a part of my vision, as soon as I saw it, I thought of a poem by Emily Dickinson. The poem is entitled “Hope is the Thing with Feathers.”
God gave us the word HOPE.
Here’s the poem:

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune–without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

God knows about this poem, and He knows that I know about the poem. And He gave it to me to hang in my living room, to remind me that hope is the thing with feathers.

The timing.
On the day I spoke in chapel, I was very weak and tired. I didn’t really want to speak. I wasn’t sure if I really had anything to say after all. Sometimes it’s hard to maintain any faith at all, and my only prayers in the last few days had been, “Lord, I believe; help, Thou my unbelief.”
On that day, I didn’t feel that I had any insights to share, or any great words from God. I didn’t even really know if I had any hope myself.
God knew that I needed to have my hope renewed. And He did it in a very personal way, just for me. And this leads me to…

The method
People talk about love languages; these are the ways in which we experience love. For some people, words of affirmation are important; for others, it’s time together, doing an activity; for others, it’s acts of service. For me, because I am obviously a shallow and needy individual, my love language is presents. I love to receive gifts. Gifts of any sort, and any size. Surprise gifts, expected gifts, serious gifts and funny gifts. Gifts are my language of love.

And God knows it.

And He choose to affirm my faith, and re-establish my vision, and flood me with His extravagant love with a gift. Wrapped in tissue and tied with a bow.

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