Where We Reside
After sitting through a highly convicting sermon last night, in which I felt totally bruised, I wondered again why I have wasted so much time in the shallows.
My life is composed of spelling lists and shoe-lace-tying lessons, when I have spent many times wondering if I should not be in another country, serving the kids of Russia who have been abandoned to an institution (детский дом, a children's home), not through parental death but outright decision. These are the "social orphans," ninety percent of whom still have at least one living parent: children who were labeled too inconvenient or costly to be reared by their own family.
The waves came crashing in last night. Why do I sit here occupied with parent conferences and paper correcting? What is the point of teaching kids how to use prepositions and protractors? Why I am swamped in the trivial, the superficial and the meaningless? 'Why,' in other words, 'this waste?' (Mt. 26:8).
It was at about 1:00 PM today, as I sat in what I thought would be a customary meeting with a parent, that God addressed the questions. The mother, wanting to apprise me of her child's physical and emotional challenges before the school year began, explained that her youngster has been making good strides. While number sense is coming along slowly, there has been some notable growth in reading.
Yet, as I sat there with the most recent diagnoses laid out before me in ten-point font, I was hardly taking mental notes on how to make classroom accommodations. Instead, I was mulling over God's exceeding intentionality. For the child He was presenting me was adopted from Russia; left for the first fifteen months of her life without forming any attachments; and is still, all these years later, recovering from the fall-out of her infancy. She was one of the ones for whom I'd been praying...
All that time, when there'd been a pressing need to intercede for those who had been relinquished for selfish or desperate reasons; when there had been a dire sense of needing to "do" something, now He was lending to these hands an avenue by which to act on all that He had inspired.
I cannot help but marvel at how masterfully He weaves His purpose with His design. Nor can I do anything but faithfully rejoice that He, fitting together the impending need to act, with the firmly-defined sphere where He's had me reside, should now merge the restlessness with reprieve.
He alone is the One to answer our striving with the sufficiency of His planning and pleasing. And we are left to exult in Him with grateful worship:
"'For I proclaim the Name of the LORD;
Ascribe greatness to our God!
The Rock! His work is perfect...'"
Deuteronomy 32:3-4
My life is composed of spelling lists and shoe-lace-tying lessons, when I have spent many times wondering if I should not be in another country, serving the kids of Russia who have been abandoned to an institution (детский дом, a children's home), not through parental death but outright decision. These are the "social orphans," ninety percent of whom still have at least one living parent: children who were labeled too inconvenient or costly to be reared by their own family.
The waves came crashing in last night. Why do I sit here occupied with parent conferences and paper correcting? What is the point of teaching kids how to use prepositions and protractors? Why I am swamped in the trivial, the superficial and the meaningless? 'Why,' in other words, 'this waste?' (Mt. 26:8).
It was at about 1:00 PM today, as I sat in what I thought would be a customary meeting with a parent, that God addressed the questions. The mother, wanting to apprise me of her child's physical and emotional challenges before the school year began, explained that her youngster has been making good strides. While number sense is coming along slowly, there has been some notable growth in reading.
Yet, as I sat there with the most recent diagnoses laid out before me in ten-point font, I was hardly taking mental notes on how to make classroom accommodations. Instead, I was mulling over God's exceeding intentionality. For the child He was presenting me was adopted from Russia; left for the first fifteen months of her life without forming any attachments; and is still, all these years later, recovering from the fall-out of her infancy. She was one of the ones for whom I'd been praying...
All that time, when there'd been a pressing need to intercede for those who had been relinquished for selfish or desperate reasons; when there had been a dire sense of needing to "do" something, now He was lending to these hands an avenue by which to act on all that He had inspired.
I cannot help but marvel at how masterfully He weaves His purpose with His design. Nor can I do anything but faithfully rejoice that He, fitting together the impending need to act, with the firmly-defined sphere where He's had me reside, should now merge the restlessness with reprieve.
He alone is the One to answer our striving with the sufficiency of His planning and pleasing. And we are left to exult in Him with grateful worship:
"'For I proclaim the Name of the LORD;
Ascribe greatness to our God!
The Rock! His work is perfect...'"
Deuteronomy 32:3-4
posted by Purple at 9:13 PM
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