Blessings

I'm thankful today for Jesus, for God, His Father and mine, and for the Holy Spirit; together these three give every good gift.

I'm glad for the coordination of muscles that allows me to type this list, to walk to school, talk with my students, and give them hugs.

Today I'm also glad for:

sunrises and the sky as it appears through trees at morning;

common brown kites;

my forgetful brain, because when it's not making me cry, it makes me laugh.....

As a teacher, I'm blessed enough to wake up each morning knowing Who my Teacher is, and that I get to spend all day with my bright, creative, interesting students. I also get to work with an excellent co- and head teacher, Dalyne, with whom I pray and laugh daily through the joys and pains that are working with young minds. 

And the greatest blessing today is the community that God is connecting me with as I work with Him here in Africa. But it's not just a connection to Africa that I'm gaining, it's a connection to the rest of this world as well. 

'God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.'

Hebrews 5:18 & 19a

Seeds

I want to preface my thought-feeling here by saying that, as a feeler, my thoughts are hard to express with words. So, here is the summary of a morning's feeling: 

"Lately I’ve been pondering lilies and other grasses that flower. This is due to the beautiful bed of Japanese iris I have outside my window, and that they are ready to bloom again.

Earlier this year, I took a handful of lilies to class as a worship illustration of God’s working in our lives. My point: at times all we see are green leaves, no flowers, but He brings flowers in His time. Besides, life isn’t only about flowering – it’s also about planting seeds and growing roots and greening up and being fertilized by insects and birds in order to make new seeds. Life comes and goes in stages. That was my point.

But the lilies keep the idea in my head, and it’s been changing. In a new application, I liken flowers to the experiences we have in life and seeds to the lessons we learn. And so, I think there are two things more that I want to add to the lilies. Thing one: in life, we have beautiful, flower experiences – epiphanies that clarify points in our lives regarding God’s love for us, our love for Him, friendships, the Holy Spirit’s work, etc. The epiphanies mature and fade and the flowers become seeds, which we can either share or allow to rot in their pods.

Thing two: our relationship with God – the relationship He has with us – is somehow a flower that doesn’t fade. And somehow, this flower is always maturing, in all the ways we grow with Jesus, but never dying. It’s always producing seeds, too. Our love for Jesus is seed for others to love Him more. Our whole life becomes a flower that, simultaneously as it flowers, produces seeds that sprout in other lives."

Feel free to comment and complete the thought...

The Speaker

The speaker points out that we don't really have
much of a grasp of things, not only the big things,
the important questions, but the small everyday
things. "How many steps up to your back yard? What
is the name of your district representative? What
did you have for breakfast? What is your wife's
shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your
sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you
parked the car?" The evidence is overwhelming.
Most of us never truly experience life. "We drift
through life in daydream, missing the true
richness and joy that life has to offer." When the
speaker has finished we gather around to sing
a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the
back of the group and hum along since we have
forgotten most of the words.

Louis Jenkins

Morning in America

What draws you to them at first is the nicknames
they have for each other and their little jokes, like
the remark the woman makes to her co-host
about his tie, then apologizes and even touches it
so she seems to more than like him, and why not,

he's handsome in a regular-guy, unthreatening
sort of way, and when they all come back
from a commercial, you almost wonder whether
the blonde who does the news might be a little
jealous, given how she keeps it up about the tie,

or maybe you think just for an instant, how is it
possible for him to watch her all dressed up in her
serious costume to read the news each morning
and not sometimes think of her "in that way,"
but when you happen to catch it the next morning,

she brings in pictures of her baby, and you say
wait a minute, she has a whole other life
off the set, this is a job and these people
are professionals, the newswoman herself,
for openers, reading right through the bad news

about all the shoppers who blew up in the open
market in Iraq and the shocking statistics about
obesity in the United States, unable no matter
how hard she tries to avoid a touch of sadness
on her face, as if what can she do besides continue

to be thin and appealing herself, which is when
you really appreciate the fat laughing guy
who does the weather because you can be serious
for just so long, and anyway there's always a silver
lining in every dark cloud, like he says, for instance

the ones hovering right here over the Midwest,
gesturing toward the cloud graphic spinning
into place, and even though everybody groans
over his corny joke including the ones behind
the camera you can't see, it sort of speaks

for the whole show, OK, the rock star can come on
to pitch her new CD but not without talking about
how she overcame depression and drug use,
and the man selling the book about his mother's
Alzheimer's has to explain how forgetting

who she was made them closer, since basically
this is all about helping you, looking in, deal with
whatever life throws at you, as the male co-host
puts it, turning between guests to his partner
while she nods thoughtfully under her hair, because

she doesn't really think of this as a job, she should be
paying the network, she says, not the other way around,
though right now they have to go to a commercial
again not just one, of course, but ten or fifteen,
the same old thing of models pretending

they are amazed housewives or sick husbands
or doctors in lab coats saying buy this,
buy that, so you can't wait to get back
to some human beings who care about each other
and about us, and who are who they really are.

~Wesley McNair

Forgiven

I found a little beetle; so that Beetle was his name,
And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same.
I put him in a match-box, and I kept him all the day ...
And Nanny let my beetle out -
Yes, Nanny let my beetle out -
She went and let my beetle out -
And Beetle ran away.

She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did,
She said she wanted matches and she just took off the lid,
She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch
An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.

She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind,
As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find,
If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid -
And we'd get another match-box and write BEETLE on the lid.

We went to all the places which a beetle might be near,
And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear,
And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout:
"A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"

It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought it must be Me,
And he had a sort of look as if he thought he ought to say:
"I'm very very sorry that I tried to run away."

And Nanny's very sorry too for you-know-what-she-did,
And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid,
So Nan and Me are friends, because it's difficult to catch
An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match

A.A. Milne

Our Greatest Fear

it is our light not our darkness that most frightens us

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

—Marianne Williamson