Day 1: From India

This is the first of my 2010 Do You Have Room? “sto­ries.” I wasn’t going to start quite yet, but then I got a par­tic­u­lar email this after­noon — sim­ple and per­fect — and it just seemed like the right time. . Besides, I fig­ure if I post a new story every day from now until Jan­u­ary 1, 2011, that will be 25 posts.

And that seems like a good number.

I received a lot of com­ments and sto­ries last year on Do You Have Room? from all over the world. I’m not sure why, but when I posted the video this year, I didn’t expect to get any more of those. At least not from far away places. It just seems so improb­a­ble, still, that some­one who lives on the other side of the world can hear and see some­thing that I cre­ated in my fam­ily room.

That’s what Fran­cis did today. And she’s from a far away place. Mum­bai, India, to be exact.


It’s night­time there now, and Fran­cis is prob­a­bly gone to bed. I don’t know hardly any­thing about her. But I know that she teaches music to chil­dren in her church con­gre­ga­tion. So do I. And I know that she is a dis­ci­ple of Jesus the Christ, and wants to share His mes­sage. And so do I.

And now, Fran­cis and I are friends.

This is her sim­ple note to me, in my Inbox early this afternoon:

Dear Ms Shawna Edwards,
We were amazed at the depth in the words of your cre­ation: “Do you have room (for the Sav­ior)”.
If you could let us have the lyrics we could teach the song to the chil­dren in our parish com­mu­nity, this Christ­mas.
Thank you.

Thank YOU, Fran­cis. Your email made all the work I put into this project worth it — just yours alone. And I’ll send you the sheet music right away so the chil­dren can learn it. And maybe it will help them remem­ber to make room for Him now and through­out their lives. As you obvi­ously have.

I’ll be post­ing a new com­ment or story every day, from now until Christ­mas, so check back often, and hear from more peo­ple like Francis.