"Your faithfulness endures to all generations"
Psalm 119:90
God gave me a little peek today. Sort of a glimpse of the future, through the eyes of the past. I was actually just looking at now, but I was thinking about the past so hard while I was looking at now, that it felt like I was in the past, looking at the future.
Peradventure I should explain.
Love that word, peradventure. It just means "perhaps" but it's so much more fun, isn't it?
Okay, here's the tale of my day... I've been in Bible Study for 12 years. For seven years I attended the same class, during the day, and then five years ago, an evening class was started in our area. This is not with my church; it's a national, non-denominational organization, and I knew that by switching classes, I would still be getting the same in-depth study, just with a different group of women.
For five of those seven years, I taught children of different ages, from 2 to 13. I'm not teaching kids anymore, but I do have some fond memories of those years.
Well today, I got to go back in time a little. That day class where I began, needed help for the day; volunteers to help the teachers in the classrooms. So I went, and hung out with several very sweet, very cute two-year-olds.
That was my trip into the past. Goldfish crackers, little praying hands, adorable children saying they want to thank God for their toys and their dogs. Sweet, sincere, short-attention spans. Gotta love 'em...
But a couple of aspects were familiar to me in a very special way. First was a flag. We always said the Pledge of Allegiance with the kids, and then the Pledge to the Christian Flag. ("I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for Whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again with life everlasting for those who believe.")
And today when the teacher got out the two flags for the kids to hold, I realized that I had made that Christian flag. That exact flag. Way back when I was teaching, we needed new flags. So I bought some fabric, and sewed some new flags. It's not a hard pattern:
And because the flags only get used for a few minutes once a week, I guess they've lasted pretty well, cuz there it was, after I was long gone from that class. It was fun for me to know that something small that I had done, was still being used after all this time.
The other thing that was special to me, was prayer time with the children. When I was teaching two-year-olds, my teaching partner and I had the idea to try to have prayer time with the children. We bought some fabric, and cut out squares ~ about 1' x 1'. And at the end of our class time, we would turn out the light, and the children would lay down, with their heads on their prayer cloths, and we would say a prayer over each of the children. Teachers from other classes told us "it will never work with two-year-olds; they won't be able to sit still for that long." But we decided to give it a try, and it worked. And they came to love it. I still remember the day when the kids finished their snack, and our noisiest, wiggliest child went over to turn out the lights, because he was ready for prayer time.
A few years after that, one of our teachers began doing volunteer work with the international arm of our Bible Study ministry. And because she'd seen it work in our classes, she introduced it to the teachers she was training in other countries.
And all these years later, the teachers in that daytime class are still making prayer cloths, and speaking quiet prayers into the ears of sweet two-year-olds. And around the world, it's happening in other classes.
Today I saw myself, ten years younger, and I got a glimpse of the impact I was allowed to have.
I hope this doesn't sound like bragging. I was just in the right place at the right time. I didn't come up with the design of the Christian flag; I just bought the fabric and took some time to cut and sew. And I didn't come up with the idea of the prayer cloths. I don't even know where the idea came from; I just know my teaching partner and I saw it, and both were inspired to try it.
God was doing something all those years ago, and I got to be a part of it. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else; I just feel privileged it was me.
I think that happens a lot more often than we think. As a matter of fact, I think it happens all the time. What we're doing matters, but so often we don't get to see it. Today I got to see it.
The things I did were small, in the realm of His people, and all He's doing on earth. But it gives me such joy to know that for a few of these things, He uses me to get them done.
I can think of nothing I'd rather do, than be used by Him.
~ "We are God's handiwork,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do" ~
Ephesians 2:10
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