Holiday Expectations, or, Thanksgiving in Malawi

A few weeks ago, I received a box well-stocked with a few things I requested, along with a few fun Thanksgiving-themed reminders of home. This week I celebrated the holiday so far away, with a crowd of people I met about four months ago, with a slightly improvised traditional menu. Things were different, but I was reminded, "This is home, too."

Traditions offer comfort and security, and I subscribe heavily to the structure they give holidays. However, when they change this drastically, a traditionalist has the chance to step back a little and consider the holiday from a different perspective. This Thanksgiving, I consider the place God brought me to. This is a place of work and pressure, a place of joy and blessing, a place of unexpected successes contrasted with startling failures and mistakes.

I have not gotten everything right; I have abused my time, had moments of extreme self-centeredness, and showed frustration with students. But blessings teem around me each day when my students enter my room, when the student newspaper is printed, when a friend from home sends an email, when an invitation to dinner is offered, when the light of the morning reminds me of its Creator, when I sit in girls' Bible study and converse with lovely women of God, when a book offers a distraction from my dysfunctional internet.

Hear Bing? "I've got plenty to be thankful for."

So Much More Than Book-Learning

Some teachers are extremely driven by their curriculum; they make solid year plans and detailed weekly plans and dynamic day-to-day plans, all with the goal of soaring through textbooks and novels and writing curricula.

I was like that. 

Things can change quickly over a weekend; I don't mean to be cryptic, but let it rest at that, without any other details. When something tragic and scary happens to a student, and a teacher sits in class Monday morning with six instead of seven others, she realizes her inadequacy. I didn't even have a tissue box for the ones who cried. Words--even the empty words that I have had repeated to me over and over--didn't leave my mouth, as my own sadness blocked any possible success at communication. 

God is gracious; he proves himself a source of strength for weeks like this one.

Teaching is more than a catalyst for book learning. It is an investment in lives of young people who are sometimes in desperate need of comfort and encouragement. These are things I can give but so very, very poorly. I have so much to learn.

All of it

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
          and thou shalt love the Lord thy God
             with all thine heart
             and with all thy soul
             and with all thy might." {deut. 6.4-5}

What does a Christian look like if she offers all her love to God, if all the love in her heart, soul, and body is poured out in his service? What does it look like but like the Son of God, who gave all of himself out of love? How poorly we frail beings fulfill the calling to love.

Loving God is a high calling, but it's a mandate given to each created being. Not a shred of the love within us is there to stay--it's all to be poured out in service, in commitment, in dedication. How can it be possible to give it all? How can we possibly find the stamina to maintain such output? God, who is rich in mercy, fills us again, progressively leading us to understand what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height of the love of Christ, which passes all earthly knowledge. We are filled with all the fulness of God.

"Take my love; my God, I pour at thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee." {frances r. havergal}