Never Stop Dreaming

Some time ago I had a conversation with a little girl who was hurting like hell.  Her Mom and Dad had gotten divorced, and the girl (who I’ll call “Princess”) was reeling from the shock.  She hurt so badly she couldn't bring herself to say that dreadful “D” word.  Princess loved her parents like all kids do; she had been praying for months that they would stop shouting and settle their differences.  But they hadn’t.  And now she wondered out loud, “Does prayer make any difference?  Is God even there?”

Many of us struggle with spiritual depression when our heartfelt prayers seem to go unanswered.  We keep our doubts hidden because we're afraid having such doubts means we're bad Christians.  And then we just stop praying, because we're not sure that prayer makes any difference. 

All of which reminds me of an old rhyme: “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/ and all the king's horses and all the king's men/ couldn't put Humpty together again.”  After praying and praying, and not seeing any change, we begin to wonder if God can ever piece together the broken bits of our miserable lives.

I’ve felt like this.  I’ll bet you have too.  Is there a cure for spiritual cynicism?  Can we learn to hope again?  I know we can because of an amazing prayer written by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  It’s sort of a window into the compassionate heart of God, with a panoramic view of God’s plan to heal everything that’s broken in the world.  The prayer shows us that “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”  Believe me, when you look through this window your mind will start to race with beautiful dreams again.

Paul wrote this prayer while locked up in a Rome prison.  (I’ve stood inside the dark, cave-like cell where it’s believed he was held captive.)  For years he had endured persecution as he carried the message of Jesus to the far ends of the Roman world.  Paul’s preaching sparked revivals, and then riots, wherever he went.  But in spite of intense suffering, his praying radiates optimism.  Paul is absolutely certain that God is in charge and that the best is yet to come.  He sees himself, and his readers, as actors in a great drama written by God, a story with a very happy ending.

Let's read through the key parts of Paul's prayer:  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . .  In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace . . . . In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.  (1:3-5)

Did you notice how the prayer begins with praise to God?  It's normal to feel anxious when we’re suffering, but Paul's worries evaporate as he considers God's gracious plan to adopt us as sons and daughters and repair our broken lives.  We’ve made a mess, but God is on the move, and there’s a glorious spring cleaning just around the corner.  As Paul says elsewhere, “where sin abounds, grace abounds even more”!  No wonder this prayer feels like Paul is dancing in his tiny cell as he prays it.

Paul uses the word “predestination” to describe God's redemptive purpose.  God has worked out his whole plan in advance!  Predestination is good news, because it means that my restoration to wholeness doesn’t depend on my will-power or strength.  My weakness and inability are irrelevant.  God’s promise to heal the world is determined by God's will, period.  It’s guaranteed.  Since God's power is ultimate, absolutely nothing can block his beautiful plan from coming true.

Consider J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic story “The Lord of the Rings.”  The world is threatened with destruction, but little hobbits are chosen to be forerunners of a new era.  In spite of treachery and fierce opposition, they keep pushing forward with their mission to destroy a dangerous ring because they are sure a happy ending has been determined by a higher power.  By the end of the long and winding story, not only will every good thing they’ve ever dreamed of come true, but (as Sam says to Frodo) “every sad thing will come untrue.”

The prayer continues:  He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. (1:9-10)

It sounds like everything ever blighted by evil is going to be reclaimed for God, putting “all things in heaven and on earth” back together again.  Not right away, not all at once, but in the end, “when the times have reached their fulfillment.”  If this is so, we’ll need a new Humpty Dumpty.  (“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/ Humpty Dumpty shouted Amen!/ God will put me together again!”)

Now Paul prays that the God who secures our future will correct our vision:  I pray that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance . . . and his incomparably great power for us who believe.  (1:18-19)

The riches of his glorious inheritance!  There’s no need to keep stumbling around in the cold and dark, not knowing that my house is sitting on top of a lost gold mine, not knowing that I’ve got the winning lottery ticket in my pocket.  This is a wake up prayer!  Open your eyes and see the immense inheritance God has prepared—the glorious restoration of all his lost sons and daughters!

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion . . . not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (1:19-23)

Now we see what Paul offers as proof of the happy ending toward which God is moving the world.  It’s the fact that God already gave his Son to mend the jagged fractures between heaven and earth and that we can now see his love spreading out and literally filling “everything in every way.” 

When we pray, we reorient ourselves by what Christ did of us, 2,000 years ago, apart from our effort.  Christ is my substitute.  He defeated death on my behalf.  He died for me, he rose for me and he lives for me.  Now Christ reigns in heaven as the all-powerful Messiah who shares God's throne, overcoming every destructive power for me and for you and for little Princess, and for her Mom and Dad too.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. (3:14-17)

In this part of Paul's prayer we see an interesting shift.  The Christ who dwells in heaven at God’s right hand also wants to live in us.  The redemption that God accomplished outside of us needs to be applied inside of us.  The Christ of history is also the Christ who “dwells in our hearts through faith.”  So how does it work, Christ dwelling in me?

Jesus is the model man who lived in total dependence on God.  As an actor in the divine drama, his role had been scripted ahead of time by his heavenly Father, and that’s why he was always listening for cues from the Master Playwright.  He says, “I do nothing on my own” (Jn 5:30).  Following God’s cues, Jesus cared for the scumbags and sufferers God placed in his path.  His unconditional love for both abused and abuser led him finally to the cross of Calvary, where like my little Princess, he wondered why God had forsaken him.  But even while stretched out in agony, his child-like trust in God enabled him to pray through tears, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Lk 23:46).

Jesus felt he was part of a true fairy tale written by God.  He knew God’s Story is like a mighty river rushing down from mountain glaciers, relentlessly pushing past every obstacle as it seeks its goal.  He knew God’s ultimate purpose cannot be thwarted.  So he followed his Father’s cues, and trusted and prayed and waited and watched, and suffered and died.  Finally, Sunday morning, he became the first man to see God’s happy ending and live happily ever after.

When Christ dwells in my heart it means I’m learning to depend on the heavenly Father just as he did.  It means I’m learning to trust in the absolute power and love of God, knowing that he chose me in Christ before the world began as part of his plan to salvage every square inch of his creation.

And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (3:17-19)

God’s vast reconstruction project is powered by love, for God is love.  So Paul prays that Christ’s followers might be “rooted and grounded in love.”  He asks God to show us “how wide and long and high and deep” his love really is.  Bible translations struggle to express the extravagant dimensions of God’s love.  Early Christians noted that these dimensions match the shape of a cross.  They saw a horizontal pole stretched out wide and long to embrace all nations and every sin-scarred individual.  They saw a vertical pole pointed deep into the earth, the realm of the dead, as it simultaneously points high to heaven, uniting us with the immortal God.

Frederick Lehman composed one of the church’s beloved hymns while meditating on Paul’s prayer.  It was World War I.  The nations were engaged in bloody conflict and Lehman’s son was missing in action.  War is hell.  But here is what Lehman wrote:

The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.
It goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell.

O love of God, how rich and pure!  How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure—the saints’ and angels’ song.

That’s poetry for a little girl whose world is falling apart.

From earliest times, believers have affirmed in the Apostles’ Creed that after Christ was crucified, “he descended into hell” to proclaim God’s victory in the realm of the dead and release its captives.  Consequently, Christ’s followers have been willing to follow their Lord to the hellish places of this world—the gutters of Calcutta, the dark alleys of Chicago, the divorce courts of Iowa, the bombed out cities of Syria—horrid haunts of the living dead, where Jesus still embraces the suffering, to show that they too are beloved of God.

In God’s Story the love that heals creation is meant to flow through human channels.  So Paul prays for us to be filled with this relentless, overcoming love for the sake of the world.  Or in Paul’s very words, “to be filled with the fullness of God.”  God wants to pour his love into our hearts so it will overflow in all directions until every ugly, putrid, evil thing is buried and washed away in a flood of grace. 

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen. (3:20-21)

The climax of Paul’s prayer is doxology, giving glory to God for the restoring love that goes beyond our wildest dreams.  This isn’t hyperbole.  Paul isn’t overly optimistic.  He’s just remembering what Jesus himself promised: “Everything is possible for him who believes” (Mk 9:23).  Jesus not only believed that everything is possible, he demonstrated it.  Jesus healed the sick, cast out demons, and raised the dead.  Jesus endured the cross and rose from the grave, and now he’s ruling in heaven and dwelling in our hearts to ensure that every grave will be emptied and every sad story will come untrue.

Since God’s plan to heal the world goes beyond our wildest dreams, it must be true that anything we can imagine in accord with his plan to put our broken lives back together again will be done.  God’s glorious new world has already touched down in the mouth of an empty Judean tomb.  Sooner or later, the life-giving presence of Immanuel, God with us, will cover the whole earth. 

Our dreams of a new world where every wrong is made right are not crazy.  They are actually fragments of a divine Master Dream.  God’s final words in the Bible are these: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).  God's invincible, triumphant grace means we never have to stop dreaming.  Recall the basic points:

1)   God is all-powerful—His redeeming purpose for the world is  predestined and a happy ending is certain, sooner or later.

2)   God is all-loving—even when I suffer he is shaping circumstances for my good, as well as for the ultimate restoration of everything damaged by sin.

3)  God is eternal—he's able to take all the time needed to accomplish his dream, both in this age and in the age to come.

So with Paul’s great prayer as a framework, and with Christ dwelling in my heart, here’s how I’m going to keep dreaming no matter what.  Through prayer I find my place in God’s story.  I listen for his cues in the divine drama.  Prayer becomes an adventure as I watch for the ways Jesus is working to make everything right again.  My faith is one of the indispensable threads in the growing fabric of God’s new world.  I’m a channel of grace.  Every story has conflict and things that go horribly wrong, but I don’t give up, because God’s love is unstoppable.

Knowing I can’t fix the broken stuff, that I’m not in control, I cry out to God for grace.  St. Augustine said, “The best disposition for prayer is that of being desolate, forsaken, stripped of everything.”  So I bring my mess with me, into prayer, and dump it on God.  No matter how horrendous, there’s no pit so deep that his love is not deeper still.  The heavenly Father will hold me tightly in the midst of life’s rubble.

I keep dreaming.  I look for the blades of grass that eventually push up through cracks in the concrete.  Instead of worrying, I watch for Jesus in the broken places.  Here are words from Paul E. Miller, whose book The Praying Life inspired some of the ideas in this sermon: “When you stop trying to control your life, you watch God weave his pattern in the story.  You realize you’re in God’s drama.  As you wait, you see him work, and your life sparkles with wonder.  You are learning to trust again.”

To finish up, I want to go back to the little girl who told me she’d given up praying for her parents to ever love each other again.  Here’s my response to the Princess.  First, don’t be embarrassed by how weak you feel.  It’s OK to be helpless.  In fact, the first step into God’s kingdom is when you realize you can’t do life on your own, that you can’t fix the broken things.  Your depression is the doorway to God.  Don’t run away from him when you’re hurting.  Instead, run toward him.

Second, little Princess, our Father in heaven has written a true fairy tale with a happy ending.  And you, and your Mom and Dad, are part of the story.  He’s a God of pure love and giving, and he has promised to get rid of every speck of hatred and selfishness in the universe.  Your dream of sweet harmony between those you love is not silly at all.  It’s God’s dream too, for the whole universe, and it will certainly come true.

Princess, don’t worry if this dream takes a long time to come true.  God has lots of broken hearts to mend.  We’re all stubborn, self-centered people.  So it may take God awhile to accomplish his goal.  God has to take us through much toil and trouble to rid us of selfishness.  Sometimes his love feels like a scorching fire, but that’s how he purifies us.  Maybe you’ll see a lot of healing come true in this life, or maybe just a little.  Maybe the process of making us whole will extend beyond this age into the age to come.  But you can be sure of this: there’s no hatefulness in heaven, and when you get there with your Mom and Dad someday, you’ll all love and respect each other again.  God is more powerful than our stubborn hearts, and he doesn’t give up on any of us. 

So keep praying, dear one.  Don’t demand that the story go just the way you think it should.   Trust the story-teller.  Look for the ways that God is working in the story.  Even if it hurts like hell, stay in the story.  “There’s no gain without pain.”  Let Christ dwell in your heart and teach you how to love your family through the good and bad of life.  God will use your love for your Mom and Dad as part of their healing.  And God will use their love to heal your heart too.

"The Weather of the Heart"

by Madeleine L'Engle

Because you’re not what I would have you be

I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.

Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar

Your you. Aaah. I would like to see

Past all delusion to reality.

Then would I see God’s image in your face,

His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.

Because I’m not what I would have me be,

I idolize Two who are not in any place,

Not you, not me, and so we never touch.

Reality would burn. I do not like it much.

And yet in you, in me, I find a trace

Of love which struggles to break through

The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.

Bearing the Beams of Love

 

If you’re like most people, I’ll bet you long to love and to be loved.  Even if suppressed, this desire is in each of us.  We were born with it.  The desire for love is part of our true identity, our reason for being.  It means we are created in the image of God.

As the English poet William Blake said, we are here to learn to bear the beams of love.  We are created to carry love and spread it around, pulsating with invincible divine light.  We are here to shine.

Yes, this inborn desire for love can be distorted by oppression.  It can even be buried.  But it is still there, deep within us.  And this is why Jesus came to save us.  During the little time he lived on earth, he carried the beams of love, in spite of everything, all the way to the cross.

 

Jesus is the light of the world; dark hate could not overcome him.  If he’s chosen you to follow him, you’re part of God’s great plan to bring love into the world.  Bearing beams of love, you’ll radiate healing and joy with Christ!

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When I Am Weak

St. Augustine: “The best disposition for praying is that of being desolate, forsaken, stripped of everything.” 

The Apostle Paul:  "We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus my also be revealed in our body. . . .  Therefore we do not lose heart. . . .  For our light, momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen." (2 Cor 4:7-18)  


"To keep me from being conceited . . . there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. . . .  For when I am weak, then I am strong."(2 Cor 12:7-10)

A Fairy Tale (in the Spirit of George MacDonald)

Recently I read a collection of fairy tales by George MacDonald, and after sampling his tender stories, I tried composing one of my own.  But while writing it, I experienced an awful emotional/intellectual conflict.  My heart wanted the story to follow the familiar fairy tale path: calamity--hopelessness--rescue--and finally--"happily ever after."  But my head protested, isn't that traditional formula a lie, a false hope?  Don't human dreams usually collapse in hopelessness with no resolution in sight?  Is it really helpful to tell feel-good stories to impressionable children when our human history points in the opposite direction?  One day as I was wrestling with these thoughts, I felt a nudge from the Holy Spirit:  The gospel of Jesus Christ is the great "fairy tale" that is absolutely true!  I recalled C. S. Lewis saying that Christianity is the "true myth" of which all human myths are faint reflections.  Jesus has conquered sin and death.  After the suffering of his cross, he arose from the tomb to actualize a new creation.  God has guaranteed that despite all the torturous turns of our history, in the end, his love will triumph.  We see glimmers of God's restoring, redeeming grace even now.  And in the life to come, we will be irradiated with the full glory of a new heavens and a new earth.  Every fairy tale we have ever imagined will then be made true in the great tale that God himself has written.  When my mind screams, "there is no resolution to human sorrow in sight," I can admit, "yes, but we live by faith and not by sight."  Christians are the only ones who can tell fairy tales with a straight face.  The future restitution of all things is as certain as the promise of Almighty God.  His predestined new world works backward to infiltrate the present darkness with brilliant beams of joy.  So I will unashamedly share fairy tales with my grandchildren.  That we are saved by grace to live "happily ever after," is so true!

Crazy Children of the Forest

Rosetta was a bouncy, blue-eyed girl with curly red locks of hair.  She lived with her grandfather and her adoring brown dog in a small stone cottage at the edge of an evergreen forest.  The grandfather had a white beard and eyes that were always smiling.  Although he was 150 years old, he never got tired, and he loved Rosetta with all his heart. 

 

Rosetta liked to play in the forest with her teddy bears, building teepees for them, and collecting colorful bird feathers that fell on the ground.  One day Rosetta met a boy of the same age who came to the woods every day to climb trees and explore caves.  His name was Christopher.  Rosetta showed Christopher her feathers, and Christopher showed Rosetta how to climb his favorite tree.  They told each other funny stories and laughed until they cried.

Sometimes they met for a picnic beside a shining lake in the middle of the woods.  They ate peanut butter cookies and watched the sparkle in each other's eyes.  One evening, Rosetta took Christopher home to meet her grandfather, and they sat with him by the fireplace drinking hot chocolate and playing dominoes until very late.  That’s where Rosetta and Christopher promised to be best friends forever.

Then something awful happened.  They didn’t mean for it to happen.  But it did.  Christopher lost his mind and forgot his own name.  He stomped on Rosetta’s feet seven times and made her cry.  Then he ran away to a far corner of the woods to play by himself.  At night he slept in a cave where nobody could find him.  He broke his promise to be Rosetta’s best friend and didn’t recognize her anymore.

Rosetta went mad too.  She got lost in the woods and talked to herself for hours on end.  She tore her hair, wore dirty clothes, and threw rocks at Christopher whenever she saw him walking around.  Sometimes they arrived by chance on opposite sides of the lake at the same time, but instead of sharing cookies, they called each other bad names.  Then they stared at their own reflections in the water and told themselves how nice they looked.

Rosetta and Christopher developed a continuous ringing in their ears, so loud they could barely hear anything but their own thoughts.  They didn’t know that Grandfather came to the forest every morning to look for them and call their names.

You may wonder how such a dreadful thing could happen.  Well, one month earlier, a wicked witch (cleverly disguised as a kindly grand-mother) set up a pink and yellow polka dot tent by the main forest trail.  There she offered “free strawberry ice cream” to the children who came to play.  The ice cream was really made of poison berries, not strawberries, and anyone eating it would go crazy, but the children had no way of knowing this.  It took thirty days for the poison to spread from the mouth to the stomach to the blood vessels, until finally it got all the way inside their bodies and turned their hearts from red to black.  The blackness of their hearts was the reason Christopher and Rosetta could think only about themselves and never about each other.

After eating the poison ice cream, Rosetta searched for Grandfather’s cottage, but couldn’t find it.  She felt exhausted.  One night she had a scary dream.  In the nightmare, she was running for her life through a jungle filled with ravenous beasts intent on devouring her.  Ugly black crows swooped down and tried to pluck out her eyes.  A deadly snake lay hissing in her path.  A monstrous wolf bared his teeth and growled hungrily as he circled round and round.  Worst of all, Christopher was laughing at her and trying to drag her into a deep, smelly swamp!   As the nightmare rose to a climax, she heard large, heavy feet crashing through the brush directly toward her.  She tried to escape.  She flailed her arms and screamed for help.  But it was no use.  She was caught by something and squeezed so tight she could barely breathe.

While Rosetta was having this nightmare, Christopher was also falling into big trouble.  You may remember that he liked to explore caves.  There were some old mines dug into the hillsides that had been abandoned long ago.  Signs warned: “Danger—Keep Out!”  But Christopher didn’t pay attention.  As he was looking around inside one of the mines, he slipped on wet rocks and tumbled head first into a deep pit.  He hit the bottom so hard it knocked him unconscious. 

When he awoke, he was covered with sticky mud and had lost his flashlight.  He couldn’t see anything, not even his own hands or feet.  He felt the damp walls and realized they were too steep to climb to the top.  He was trapped!  There was just one good thing resulting from his fall.  He suddenly remembered his own name again, and he remembered Rosetta and the promise he had made to always be her friend, and the funny stories and cookies they used to share.  He felt sad and missed her. 

Christopher sat shivering in the dark and cried because he was sure he would have to die in this forgotten mine shaft.  How he wished for one more chance to see Rosetta and tell her he was sorry.

While he was thinking about these things he felt the rush of wind and the vibration of wings beating wildly above him.  A giant bald eagle flew down and grasped Christopher firmly in its talons, whisking him up and out of the dark pit.  Up and up into the fresh air and bright sunlight above the forest!  Triumphantly, the eagle screamed a joyful cry and carried Christopher to the place where Rosetta lay sleeping.

Suddenly Rosetta awakened from her nightmare.  She was surprised to find herself lying not in a dangerous jungle but in her own friendly, evergreen forest.  Instead of crows zooming in to attack she saw only jaunty blue jays and rollicking red cardinals with feathers in their beaks for her collection.  She realized that the poisonous snake on the path was just a curvy stick pointing the way home.  In place of a snarling wolf, she saw her dear old dog running circles around her with happy barks, encouraging her to get up and play.  The friend she feared was lost forever—Christopher—was there beside her, laughing with delight to see her again and reaching out to gently take her hand.  Finally, she felt a tingle from head to foot as she realized what was squeezing her so tightly:  It was Rosetta’s own loving Grandfather holding her in his arms.

Grandfather had sprinkled a secret formula of herbs and spices on Rosetta’s head to counteract the witch’s curse.  Grandfather also sent the eagle to rescue Christopher from the mine shaft after he came to his senses.  He loved them both, and as soon as he found out about the witch’s evil plot, he had stayed up all night to plan their rescue, and worked all day to bring them back to their right minds and arrange for a joyful reunion.

Still, Rosetta felt confused about what her own eyes and ears seemed to be telling her.  Having been trapped so long in the grip of a bad dream, it was hard to believe anything else.  Maybe the harmless stick was a serpent after all, she thought.  And how could she be sure the boy who used to stomp on her toes and call her bad names wasn’t just pretending to care for her now? 

 

Rosetta finally tried to stand up, but it was no use.  Her arms and legs refused to move.  In fact, she was paralyzed from the neck down.  Grandfather’s magic, while awakening her from the nightmare, had a tragic side-effect.  Even more magic would be needed.  Huge tears began running down her cheeks as she cried, “Help me!”  Christopher saw her plight and quickly scooped her up in his arms.  He carried Rosetta all the way to the cottage where Grandfather tenderly bathed her, dressed her in clean clothes and laid her in her own soft bed.  Christopher also took a warm bath and put on clean clothes.  Then Grandfather prepared a feast for the hungry children.  Christopher held the spoon so Rosetta could eat.  Then he sang her love songs and fed her peanut butter cookies until the sun came up in the morning. 

 

All this time, Rosetta and Christopher looked at the sparkle in each other’s eyes.  Finally, Rosetta was sure that the lovely birds, and friendly old dog, and her caring friend were more real than her long nightmare.  They forgave each other then and there, and promised to be best friends again.  Christopher and Grandfather took care of Rosetta for many months until her body was healed and her strength returned.  And they lived happily ever after.