Two years ago as part of the Brandon Jazz Festival, Suba Sankaran and Dylan Bell were doing a workshop with my vocal jazz group - Vocal Point. One of the warm up activities they did with us was a breathing exercise. They asked us to completely exhale all of the air in our lungs by the time they counted down from 10. We were to refrain from inhaling until further instructions. At 1, they then instructed us to exhale further. We
all did. Of course the follow up question was, "why did you still have air to exhale when your instructions were to expel
all your air?"
Hmmm.
So we tried it again. All the wiser.
Funny. Same thing happened again. We thought we were spent but there was still air to be had.
I felt I was in the middle of this exercise a few weeks ago - like I had expelled more air than normal. The startling realization that I had more to give. Only it wasn't air I was expelling - it was love.
I was able to sub in my eldest daughters class for a few days. I LOVED the experience. I LOVED being with her and being in the same school as all my kids. I LOVED having lunch with them in the family lunch room. First day was my request, second day was theirs!
The day and night before I went in, I prepared. I memorized every name with every face from the class photo we had at home along with a fact or two about each student.
I prayed.
I planned some fun math extras ("fun math" not meant to be an oxymoron!) should the opportunity arise.
I struggled with anxiety and spent time handing it over to God. Then I approached my eldest about my hopes for the days and also what I feared. Not surprisingly, we both had a few fears. She was worried about how the class would treat me. I was moved.
After the two days in the classroom, I felt I had worked harder than ever before! I wanted to think that I always gave as much as I could for each call I received. But this
was different. As I was reflecting, I pondered the mix of personalities in the class as well as the opportunity to collaborate with the teacher ahead of time. This was a gift that I normally don't receive for the average sub call. I shared his strategies and I continued patterns the class already knew.
Perhaps the largest investment made was emotional. I can't remember ever caring so much for one person in the class; for ever wanting so much for the whole experience of learning and relationships around this one person to be as excellent as possible given all the variables that were present in this situation. My deepest desire was that God's love be evident in the way I transferred information, checked on progress, walked with them through questions, interacted with them casually, and my response to misbehaviour. I wanted everything to go well for the sake of the one.
What was so striking to me during my reflection was the unveiling of God's love to me; love given to us all. That determined work of God to keep each one of us obedient by giving us His Spirit and sacrifice through Jesus (1 Peter 1:2.) The great lengths that God will and has gone through to love us to Himself. We can see this love through so many things, through information that is passed down to us through God's Word, through moments of victory achieved that can only be attributed to God, through the forgiveness He graciously grants as we forget and fall into wrong, how He walks us through our questions and unbeliefs, how He calls us to Himself through moments of sanctuary in our days, how He orchestrates the details of our lives and how He loves us through the caring acts of others in our lives.
He wants to save us.
He has a gracious habit of saving people like Noah, Lot, Daniel,Paul... This message is threaded through the Bible. It would make sense that we, His image bearers, would find significance in living a way that would point others to this saving grace through our daily work.
I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3: 16 - 21
