We have new neighbours. Our little cul-de-sac is full of surprises that one could never have predicted. When you stalk real estate pages during the current housing crisis in Australia, you become a little desperate, and after a few failed attempts to buy a house, you’re ready to give up. Many Australians are faced with the difficulty of finding a home in this season. One of the hardest parts of moving house was convincing our kids to enlarge the space of their tent and move to a new neighbourhood.
Whenever we talked with our kids about moving, it was always a flat-out no. Even though their rooms were tiny, we lived on a major road and with old houses come many maintenance issues, walls eroding, window sills leaking. Our kids had never known anything different. The last time we moved house, they were two years old and four years old, and they couldn’t remember what it meant to move house.
They didn’t know what they didn’t know. Throughout 2024, we attended hundreds of home opens. Many times we gave up, without the right house, with the list of things we wanted. Each time we went to a home open, our kids would roll their eyes and say, “We love our house, and we don’t need to move.”
We gave up the search and went overseas for Christmas. We had never been to Africa as a family, even though my husband was born there. He was born in South Africa and lived there until he was 15. This trip was the perspective we needed, and something significant shifted in our lives. We stayed with our 90-something-year-old Ouma in a little Cape Dutch house in the Western Cape winelands of Stellenbosch. Each afternoon, we walked to the lake to watch the sun set over the mountains, and most mornings, we walked to a local coffee shop to watch the shade and tone of the mountains across the vineyards shimmer.
As we looked back on the life we lived daily in Australia, my husband and I conducted our end-of-year review and realised we needed to make simple changes. As we searched real estate apps from a distance, this house caught our attention. A fixer-upper of sorts, but it ticked every one of our list of house requirements. It was a year ago today that we saw this house, and I immediately dismissed the little glimmer of potential because of the rate at which houses were turning over in our area.
Yet, I prayed, “God, if this is for us, then hold this sale for our family and may we be present to the people in the neighbourhood.” The way the sale went through was nothing short of a miracle. We sold our house, and then the buyer disappeared overseas. There were issue after issue with the contracts, but this house that had waited for us and the neighbours who would become our friends were still there.
Last night, we were coming into the dock after taking our neighbours out on the boat. They speak limited English but have the most uncommon gift of hospitality. A few times a week, they bring food from their Chinese restaurant to our family. They are the most generous people we have met.
We took them out fishing, because they hadn’t seen the ocean from a boat in Australia before, and it was a moment of shared encounter, that is the heart of being neighbourly. As we walked towards our car, on a beach on the other side of our nation, Australia, I saw a social media stream of atrocity that was unfolding. An act of terrorism, on our soil, on beach sand, targeted at a Jewish festival with the intention of celebrating light in the darkness.
This is where words fail.
I need God to speak, as I can’t say much to right set, what is profoundly wrong.
“For God does speak—now one way, now another—though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, he may speak in their ears and terrify them with warnings, to turn them from wrongdoing.”
– Job 33:14-17
I’m listening, God, heal your people.
Speak, we are listening.
I stood alongside our neighbours in shock at the conflict that had arrived on our shore.
When the season is not so merry and bright, God are you still with us.
Heal our land.
Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah) is the Jewish Festival of Lights, an eight-day celebration commemorating a miracle of faith and resistance, neighbours standing alongside neighbours, strangers acknowledging strangers, united together under the name of God.
The historical event: In the 2nd century BCE, the Syrian-Greek ruler Antiochus IV tried to force Jews to abandon their faith and desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem. A small group of Jewish fighters, the Maccabees, rebelled and, against overwhelming odds, reclaimed the Temple.
The miracle: When they went to rededicate the Temple, they found only enough sacred oil to keep the menorah (lampstand) burning for one day. Miraculously, it burned for eight days, which was enough time to prepare more oil. This is why Hanukkah lasts eight nights. Hanukkah celebrates religious freedom, the triumph of faith over oppression, and God’s faithfulness to sustain His people. It’s about light persisting in darkness—literally one day’s worth of light lasting eight days.
Amid difficult times, conflict and injustice, it is easy to assume that God is not speaking. We can easily ask, “Why did this happen, God?” or, rightly, think, “God, where were you?”…
God is speaking in these places of difficulty, fear and complexity.
In darkness: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” – Isaiah 9:2
In loss: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” – Psalm 147:3
In loneliness: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” – Psalm 23:4
When joy feels absent: “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” – Psalm 126:5
The incarnation of my Christian faith itself speaks to this – Emmanuel, God with us in our pain, born into vulnerability, acquainted with sorrow.
Christmas isn’t always merry and bright; there are deep, aching pains from the loss we experience in this world. There are more wars currently underway worldwide than at any other time in human history. 61 active conflicts, the highest number since statistics began in 1946. And most of these conflicts are from territorial land disputes—neighbour against neighbour. The light came into darkness precisely because the darkness is real.
When we sing Peace on earth this week, in this season of light, may we truly believe that it begins in our own neighbourhoods, as we walk each other home.
Closing Reflection Journaling Questions:
- What is God speaking to me in this place of difficulty, fear, or complexity? How can I process the stories of loss and injustice with a conversation tomorrow?
- How am I being called to walk with a neighbour this season?
- Who are my neighbours? Do I know their stories, their struggles, their dreams?
- What does “home” mean to me beyond physical walls? Where do I truly feel at home?
