They were not men to stand on ceremony, he thought, and they knew that true authority came from sharing the hard work, not attempting to place oneself above it.

I can't expect the kingdom without the cross

In preparing for yesterday's Sunday school lesson, I just ran across Matthew 16:21-26 again. It's the passage in which Jesus--right after Peter has spoken aloud the truth that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel--explains the part of the Messiah prophecies He has come to carry out: He has not come to rule but to die. That doesn't line up with Peter's expectations for the Messiah, no sir! It's at this point in the story that Matthew 4:8-10 comes to mind for me; Jesus was offered a short-cut to gaining the kingdom He has been promised by God the Father . . . & He refuses to take the easy way. He chooses the part of suffering; He chooses the cross & all the shame & indignity & misery & defeat that comes with it. That choice is what He explains to the incredulous disciples in chapter 16. The way of the cross seems an unlikely path to  greatness, to power, to influence--to any of the things we long for down deep inside. But according to Christ, this death is the only way to the life I truly want.

Traitorous nostalgia!--lying to me that the flowers of the past contain everything I long for, while All I truly desire is in the present! Luke24:5b & John8:58

III John 4

Just heard from a former student of mine. I taught him in 7th grade, and he graduated last June. In his first year of college, God has been working in his life and he plans on going on a missions trip this summer. He was writing to ask for support--prayer and financial if possible. I'm reminded of III John verse 4 "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth."

He ended his letter with this: "Today during Bible Study, we went over a small bit of 2 Timothy and I was fondly reminded of how you made our class memorize the whole entire book, it was worth it."

That does this ol' teacher's heart a world of good today =)

Just heard ad on the CA classical station: "The San Francisco Symphony presents the St. Louis Symphony this Saturday @ Davies Symphony Hall"!

Just realized that I'm nearly done with my 8th year of teaching. It's hard to believe that many years have gone by already! Yet it's how I live my life :)

"I'm of the opinion that for every one person who wants to teach, there are thirty people who don't want to learn." ~ Sarah Jane from New Faces, New Friends

"Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Psalm 16:11 :)

a poem for night time =)

Every time I lay me down to sleep,

I give myself to You, O Lord, to keep;

Your arm my shield while I rest, unaware;

I roll upon your shoulders all my care.

Maybe if I don't have the strength to "stand in the gap" right now, I can at least sit in it & help to "make up the hedge" . . . :)

Cleaning out a computer that has more bugs than a hive of termites . . .

On a t-shirt showing a Lockheed Martin U-2 airplane: "In God we trust, All others we monitor"

Times like these :/

I think every teacher is faced with such times as these: times when there is much to accomplish in a short timespan. Somehow, to accomplish the goal, the teacher has to not only keep her own mind but marshal the minds of her students into the same direction without trampling their ideas, without making them keenly feel their ignorance of the big picture, without overwhelming them with the big picture, without expecting too much of them, without expecting too little of them--any or all of which robs them of their personal investment in the project. I've arrived at such a moment again & wonder if I have the needed patience & clarity & gentleness--as well as a certain nameless quality of diplomacy--to accomplish this great task. In the end, the way the goal is accomplished is of far more importance than is the goal itself.

In which I learn that the ideas in my QUICK AND CLEVER BEADING book may all be clever but are not all quick . . . .

The story of the Handwriting on the Wall according to Ethan

In Sunday School during our study of Daniel, the kids were given handouts to complete as they read the chapters in their daily Bible reading. The handouts were fill-in-the-blank style, and here is Ethan's (age 6?) version of the story from Daniel 5 [his answers will be in caps]--"The Handwriting on the Wall"

King Belshazzar held a FEAST. 

He & his guests drank wine from God's temple AND and praised their FALSE gods. 

AN ANGEL appeared & wrote on the RULES. 

The king was afraid! Daniel AND the LORD. 

He told the king he had SINNED & would lose his HAIR. 

That's as far as Ethan was able to go before he ran out of time that week :) The worksheets have certainly been fun to read! Lol :)

"Of course, when they were younger, my parents spent most of their time fighting crime. After all, that's what people with superpowers do--at least until they realize they have to get real jobs." ~Ordinary Boy 

"As usual, Plasma Girl was thinking sensibly--the last thing a superhero on a mission wants to do." ~Ordinary Boy

(from The Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy book one: The Hero Revealed by William Boniface)

Circumscribe

One of my students did a grammar assignment where he had to guess the meanings of words based on the roots of the words. The book gave him some roots to use but left some for him to guess by himself. Circumscribe was one of the latter--the book told him what "circum" meant but not "scribe." 

What he put down makes an awesome "Daffynition." 

CIRCUMSCRIBE: a writer who moves around. =D

2 Peter 1:2-3 Today's multiplication problem :) . . . or maybe it's a chemistry equation! :D

Why poetry from the Germanic tribes was mostly oral: their fingers were too cold to write anything down! ;)

So . . . it's probably a bit cliched to state that I'm testing out something new to me--blogging from my phone. But that's exacty what I'm doing ;)