Living in the sunshine of God's love

Do you get the blues in the winter? Some people call it SAD--seasonal affective disorder. I love the cold weather, love sitting by a fire drinking coffee or hot cocoa, love snuggling under a quilt with my darlin', but those short days, especially the cloudy ones, wear on me. I feel as if my mind is in hibernation mode. No new ideas, no creative energy. Then the days start to get longer, we have some bright sunshiny days, and I am renewed.
I've been sitting in the sunshine, soaking up the warmth, watching the birds, listening to the breeze, and looking up into that gloriously blue, cloudless Texas sky, thinking about sunshine and warmth and God.
For some reason, it just struck me how God knows us *wholely*. He knew me, as the Psalmist says, "before I was knit together in my mother's womb." Before my parents or grandparents were even conceived, He knew me. He knew my heart, my mind, my very DNA. He knew the mistakes I would make, the contrary spirit I sometimes indulge, the angry words I would one day say. He knew too the love He would kindle in me for the husband I had not met, the babies yet to be born, for the family to come, whether through birth or marriage, adoption formal or informal, all of us bound together through blood and through love--just as He binds us to Himself through the blood of Jesus, and the eternal love through which we find salvation and become His children.
For today, for this moment, I feel His *knowing* of me. Not just the past or the present, but entirely, and for eternity, He knows me, and He loves me anyway.

Then the student said...

I teach in a disciplinary program. My husband and I both teach there. We've been doing it for years, and feel that it is our calling--our gift--to work with these students. Our gift, in more than one sense. A gift from God who calls us to do this work. A gift for dealing with difficult students, students who often have never had any parental guidance, who may not even know one or both of their parents, or who have had to assume the adult role in the household because the "adults" behave like immature children. But these kids also are a gift to us. They often give us insights into issues we have struggled with for a long time. Sometimes they gift us with their love, the gift of their trust, and their progress toward adulthood. Sometimes they just give us a good laugh.
Thursday I had to redirect a student several times, because he was not working on his assignments. Each time, he argued that he had nothing to do, but as I went through the stacks of books and papers in his cubicle, we found that he did indeed have a great deal of work to do; he just didn't want to do any of it.
Mid-afternoon I saw that he was drawing. I took the drawing from him, and redirected him. His response?
"If you hadn't of seen that, you wouldn't have come back her and taken it away from me!!"
What could I say? He was right; if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have taken it.
Here is where you are supposed to laugh :)