When The Lord Builds the Classrooms

I'm so excited. I'm frothing with excitement. I had been gingerly praying for hope and change (cough) for weeks. “Oh God, please let us get through February without dying. Please let the weather shift. Please bring people into church. Please heal everyone who's sick. Please let Matt be encouraged. Please let the children remember even one spelling word. Please Do Something.” You know that place of waiting? You know that God is active in the world and cares for his children and has promised to do many many things, but, when you're mucking around in the thick of it, you can't see what he's doing. You begin to doubt and worry that maybe you will be wearing the same pair of shoes in the wilderness for forty years and eating manna even though your forty years is only about a week and a half.

And then you wake up one morning, and huddle next to the heater with your ridiculously big coffee and listen to the children do math and spell and watch out of the corner of your eye your email ping ping ping as God manoevers and organizes and cajoles and works the vestry into not one classroom in four or five months but all three classrooms in three weeks. And then you stand and watch for three more days as the timing shows itself perfect, down to every smallest detail. For eight weeks the class who so desperately need their own space, have been toiling on building little Arks of the Covenant and Tabernacles and making books entitled How God Came to Live With His People. They began in Genesis and worked methodically all the way up to Uzza perishing for touching the Ark and finally to Psalm 19. The Law of The Lord is perfect. It revives the soul. It is sweeter than honey. They finished their work on Sunday and on Friday I realized what had happened. All that they need for the next four weeks is a little folder. No glue, no popcycle sticks, no clay. Just easily shuffled paper and chairs. How is it that I am looking at so little work? How is it possible to so seemlessly and easily move classes around in the middle of the school year? What, when I blithely planned the year in August, would I have thought if I'd known that God would use my plans and units and blind wanderings as part of his overall work? I would probably be just as surprised as I am now because I have a memory the size of a pea.

So all my prayers are gratitude this week. Thankfulness. Surprise. Hope. Real hope in God's unchanging timeless love and provision.