“He said to me, ‘Do not fear, greatly beloved; you are safe. Be strong and courageous!’ When he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, ‘Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.’”

Daniel 10:19

---

I watched the small boy suddenly realize

He was alone in the crowd.

His steps slowed, as his vision went long and wide

Searching for the face of the adult

Who would protect him from the sea of strangers.

But he could not find who he was looking for.

I watched him as the crushing fear

Began to take him

The understanding he was lost and alone

With no idea how to find his way back.

And as I prepared myself

To approach him with my own child on my hip

Thinking to hold him safely at my side

Until the one for whom he searched was found

I watched

As other mothers peeled away from their families

Nearly as silent as they were sudden

Forming a protective circle of a love around him

A circle of mothers, who had all been drawn

To the fear of this small, small child

Who was incredibly lost,

As if the tears he had yet to cry had been a summoning spell

That called out to us to keep him safe.

That moment, as the women comforted that stranger’s boy,

Had a certain kind of ordinary holiness

That renders all the theology and philosophy I’ve learned

Empty words strewn from empty mouths.

No other proof of God can ever hold such power

As watching those women respond without hesitation

To that little boy’s unvoiced cry for help.