Teach Me to Trust

We are eating celebratory brownies for supper tonight. (Celebratory brownies are just like normal brownies only they have sprinkles on top and are eaten to celebrate a significant event.) Joel passed Driver’s Education. He went to class, completed the driving sessions, and watched all the videos, passed the driving test and the written test. All that is left to do between now and next June is to practice driving. Oh, and learn to keep both hands on the steering wheel. Apparently, we are now to use the 8 and 4 positions instead of the 10 and 2 spots so as to prevent us from poking out an eye should our airbags deploy.


You learn something new every time you have a child go through Driver’s Education.


I was just thinking about how neat and complete Driver’s Education is. You sign up, pay up and show up and everything happens as it should. In two weeks you are a driver just waiting for your 16th birthday. I am going to be teaching a class, on-line, for a school many miles away. This class starts on Monday the 18th, about two weeks after I was asked to teach it, and about 10 days after I received the textbook in the mail. There is nothing nice and neat or even complete about this class. It is a subject matter with which I am not very familiar, but interestingly enough have very strong opinions about. Oh, and my opinions do not match those of the author of the textbook judging from all the excited red words I have put in the margins of the book as I am reading.


I agreed to take on this class because the person asking me really needed someone (anyone!) to teach it, and I know it will be a good review for me before I take a similar class for my program. Right now, though, my stress level is sky high and my trust level is . . . wait a minute . . .no, I can’t see my trust level from where I am standing. Okay, forget trying to rewrite the syllabus or get through the chapter on formative assessment, or write the quiz for the first three chapters. Forget trying to understand how I am supposed to evaluate student evaluations of tests to which I don’t have access. Forget trying to set up the grade book on the computer classroom or brainstorm discussion threads for the discussion board. Forget figuring out the assessment tool to write assessments for a class on assessments! I have other lesson planning to do. I need to have a teacher conference with MY teacher.


God, teach me to trust!


Perhaps this is His lesson plan:

Objective: student will be able to trust in Me for all things
Method: the hard way
Procedure:
1. Throw her into teaching a class that she knows she is not ready to teach.
2. Give her textbook and computer access at the last minute.
3. Allow problems with designing the class for which she cannot obtain earthly assistance.
4. Help her teach the class.
5. Help the students to learn in spite of her lack of preparation, expertise and shaky teaching practices.

Evaluation:

As her Heavenly Father I know everything about her faith but I will be looking for her to come to Me in prayer.

Time need to reach objective:

Her lifetime

Remediation and reteaching are indicated.


In my daily Bible reading I am in the book of Esther. Things looked impossibly bleak for the children of Israel in Xerxes’ kingdom, but God carried out His plan and His children were saved. Each time I read through the Old Testament I marvel at the lack of trust of those Israelites. They had so many huge miracles written in their history books and handed down from generation to generation, yet they so easily threw away their trust. But, I know that their story is my story, too.


God, teach me to trust!

May Your unfailing love rest upon us,
O LORD,
even has we put our hope in You.
Psalm 33:22