The Jones Family Chronicles

It is a short engagement and a small wedding, and there is a great deal to do. Allison has the binder open to somebody else's day, and this time she asks before she decides. Andy has been without a red ball since the afternoon he carried his across the street, and will not take a new one. The night before, Ava Grace asks the question nobody else thought to ask — what happens if Brother Thompson forgets? On a Saturday in September, in front of a room holding every face that waited a year alongside him, a slow man says his piece in his own plain voice, and a two-year-old finds out where his ball has been the whole time. And when the last of it is cleared away, two chairs sit out on a porch that only ever had one. The Season Two finale. 

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:9-10; Mark 10:9 (KJV).

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After a year of being told to wait, Brother Thompson asks Dad and Pastor Garrett one more time — and this time the answer is yes. Allison Jones, eleven years old and the finest organizer in the congregation, hears the news and does what Allison does: she gets a binder. Tabs. A timeline. A rain plan. It is genuinely beautiful work, and Brother Thompson, who is newer in the Lord and gentle to a fault, says yes to every bit of it. Then Allison walks past his porch with a printed schedule and hears him practicing what he actually wants to say — plain, stumbling, out loud, to his dog — and understands that there is nowhere in her beautiful plan for him to simply talk. What it costs her to close that binder is the whole story. 

Scripture: Proverbs 16:9; Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV).

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Sister Johnson puts a bare paper tree on the classroom wall, and every verse a child learns by heart earns a leaf. Ana is fast — gloriously, effortlessly fast — and by the third week she has twenty-six leaves and a number she cannot stop saying out loud. Ava Grace picks one verse. A long one, with a word in it she does not understand, and she works on it for three weeks without earning a single leaf. Then Ana finishes her little sister's verse for her in front of the whole class, and is entirely correct, and something breaks anyway. When Ana's own turn comes and the words go clean out of her head, it is the sister she embarrassed who crosses the room. A story about the difference between knowing a thing and spending it. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:4; 1 Corinthians 8:1; Proverbs 27:2 (KJV).

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Addison Jones knows that the detail is where the meaning lives. On art day in Sister Suarez's classroom she builds a paper street so lovely the whole class gathers to look at it — gold-paper windows, a striped awning, a tiny dog on the corner. Three tables over, a boy named Dexter is working just as hard on a street of his own. Then a jar of muddy rinse water goes over, and in the space of one second Dexter's whole world is ruined, the room leans away, and there is no grown-up in the doorway to fix it. What Addison does next costs her a good sweater, a pretty pair of hands, and the admiration she had been quietly enjoying — and she finds out that the prettiest thing in the room was never on anybody's desk at all. 

Scripture: Mark 10:43-44; Philippians 2:3 (KJV).

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Every Sunday the Pastor's family sits in the pew right in front of the Joneses — Pastor Garrett, Sister Garrett, and their littlest, Houston, who is just about Andy's age and just about Andy's favorite person in the world. The two of them have struck up the wobbly, joyful friendship of two two-year-olds. Which is exactly why it is such a catastrophe when they get into it over Andy's red ball, right in the middle of service. The babies are over it in roughly four seconds. 

The Jones sisters are not. 

Certain that somebody must be right and somebody must be wrong, the girls set out to settle the case — and end up in a far bigger fight than the one they were trying to judge. A warm story about brotherly love, and about the wide difference between keeping the peace and keeping score. 

Scripture: Matthew 5:9; Ephesians 4:32 (KJV).

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It is an ordinary week at the Jones house, which is to say it is a full one — and this time the story belongs to the one who holds it all together. The dishwasher quits on a Monday. The to-do list grows back overnight like grass. And Mom, moving through it the way she always does, catches herself living a little way out ahead of her own life: once this is finished, then I’ll rest; once things settle, then it will be good. But the settling never quite comes. It takes a dropped plate, a devotion turned around on her for once, and four plain words from her youngest girl to help Mom see the thing she is always telling everybody else — that thanks is not something you save for when everything is finished, and that what she has, unfinished and ordinary and loud, was already more than enough. Scripture: Philippians 4:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (KJV).

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Summer is over, and the Jones children head into a new school year at Glendale Christian Academy — where, this year, the halls are full of family. Their aunts, aunt Jessica and aunt Tanya, are teachers; their grown cousins, the twins Alexis and Alyssa, are classroom aides for the very first time. So when the first-day jitters give way to a building stacked with people who love them, the Joneses are reminded that God really does go in with you. But there is one boy at the cubbies who has none of that — Micah, brand-new in town, crying quietly with nobody in the world to sit by. And Ava Grace, six years old and wrapped in more belonging than she can hold, discovers that once God has gone in with you, He has a way of turning you right around to go in with somebody else. Scripture: Joshua 1:9; Deuteronomy 31:8 (KJV).

Of all the Jones children, Ava Grace speaks the least — and somehow says the most. For six years her family has treasured the way she can put the truest thing into the fewest words, because those words always came wrapped in love. But this week the love slips off, and the true things start coming out sharp. When Addison steps out one Sunday morning in an outfit she took a brave chance on, Ava Grace looks at her with those big honest eyes and says the plain true thing — and watches, for the very first time, a face fall because of her. The colors really were fighting. Being right does not help one bit. With Mom’s honey, Dad’s open Bible, and a lesson about pleasant words, Ava Grace learns that truth and kindness were always meant to travel together — and that the very same true thing can be handed over soft. Scripture: Ephesians 4:15; Proverbs 16:24 (KJV).

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Sister Beverly gives Ana a paper envelope of sunflower seeds, and Ana plants them along the fence with plans for blooms taller than Dad. Then she discovers there is nothing to do but wait — and waiting has never been Ana’s strong suit. That same week, Brother Thompson goes to Dad and to the Pastor with the biggest question of his life: he wants to ask Sister Beverly to marry him. The counsel he receives is one small word. Wait. To Ana, who is seven and in a hurry, wait sounds an awful lot like no — until a dug-up seed, a quiet porch, and a secret she must carry all by herself teach her the difference. A warm story about God’s timing, godly counsel, and the things that are growing right now where nobody can see them. Scripture: Psalm 27:14; Galatians 6:9 (KJV).

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Addison has to say her memory verse in front of the whole church on Sunday evening, and she has spent two weeks planning exactly what she will wear. The verse is not the problem. Being looked at is. Meanwhile, after Sunday school tells the story of David and the giant, two-year-old Andy falls asleep with his red ball in his fist — and dreams himself down into the valley of Elah, where the armor is far too big, the giant is far too loud, and the smallest person in Israel has exactly one word and one red ball. Andy cannot tell a soul what he dreamed. But when Addison stands trembling at the back of the church in the perfect outfit that is not helping her one bit, a toddler toddles up and hands her something small and round. A dream-episode about going out in your own clothes, in the name of the Lord. Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:47; Psalm 56:3 (KJV).