Elementary Theology

Maybe I’ve been with eight-year-olds too long, but I’m finding that theology is unusually accessible within the classroom…

…when, after a day of a messy art project, one of the kids, seeking a helper who can get another supply, yells to a roomful of sticky workers, “Who has clean hands?!”
Psalm 24:3-4 “Who may ascend to the hill of the LORD? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart…”

…or when, today, one student who had just flanked me with a hug, exclaimed, “If I was hot glued to you, I would be very happy!”
Joshua 23:8 “But you are to cling to the LORD your God…”

…or when the astronomy reading explains:
“The Sun’s gravity helps hold the objects in the solar system in orbit…”
Col 1:17 “…in Him all things hold together…”
“The sun… gives heat and light.”
1 John 1:5 “…God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
“It helps things grow…”
Eph. 4:15-16 “…we are to grow up in all aspects into Him… even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.”
“…and lets us see.”
John 16:13 “‘…when He, the Sprit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth…’”
“Without the sun, there would be no life.”
John 15:4-6 “‘Abide in Me… As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me…’”


Praise be to the God whose joy and desire it is to whisper to us His Scripture, so that, whenever we turn to the right or to the left, ‘our ears will hear a word behind us, “This is the way, walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21).

Levi’s and the Learning Curve

A fellow teacher related to me today how one of our mutual students had approached her in shock after seeing me in jeans: “Miss Milco has her hair in a pony tail and she isn’t wearing a skirt!” Another girl had earlier commented to me, with my changed appearance, “You look like a teenager!” And two other students had to react to my outward change with the question, “How old are you?” and an (amusingly) genuine “Really?” when I promptly replied, “Twelve!”

Who would’ve thought Levi’s could be so traumatic?!

Still, I’m reminded of how I sometimes react to God… when I come to Him with shock to see Him differently than I’d expected; when His appearance creates a reaction from me; and even, when – not fully beholding Him – I gullibly believe ‘what looks to be,’ because I’m still not squaring what all of His congruent yet too-large-to-grasp characteristics really are.

Perhaps most though, I ponder His character at this time because of what yesterday held: a time of anger, which God resolved – not by stifling it, or telling me to do away with it, but by graciously giving voice to the deep-seated emotion which I had been unable to articulate. I didn’t think God was supposed to work like that.

And yet, what I needed in that moment (what my Heavenly Father knew, and most aptly provided) was not a way to “stop up” the tears or questions, but to distinctly formulate what was churning inside, so that – in confessing to Him all that was puzzled and hurting – I would then know release from that spiritual unrest.

And there’s where the intimacy breathes. Where His ‘blotting out transgressions’ begins translating into the reality in which I abide; where there isn’t shame in confessing that my reactions are surface, and that I need the Spirit to break through the deluge of emotion to fasten my eyes on what really gnaws away at the relationship I have with my Father.

I wouldn’t have expected that God would have calmed me through aiding my tears, any more than my students were accustomed to seeing me in jeans, but the point isn’t the expectation. Rather, it is specifically in those moments where my expectations of God are most tattered and stale, that He grants to me – by a wise graciousness exceeding my hopes – more of His character ‘peeled away.’ Another revelation of who He is, and not in line with my subtle presumption.

For, just as He is unwilling that I live apart from life, so He is as unyielding in destroying my ignorance, and finally bringing me into that sanctuary where my one boast is this: ‘that I understand and know Him, that He is the LORD…’ (Jeremiah 9:24).