Little Stories

Recently, I was sending an email to our group of preschool volunteers, and I caught myself making one of those statements that sound like they are off a greeting card.  "Through the years the lessons I teach, are also the lessons that God teaches me through."  Although it was kind of goofy sounding, I left it in there because it truly states how God communicates with me.

It started on the last Sunday of the year.  As I sat in church, our pastor was speaking, and he used how they used to draw maps as an illustration.  The map would only be drawn of what was known at the time.  Beyond that, they would note the danger of the unknown by depicting a dragon.  Here Be Dragons was the name of the sermon.  Illustrating that while we do not know what may be in store for the next year, we can be confident in the truth of God's word.   "For God has said, 'I will never fail you.  I will never abandon you.'  So we can say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper, so I will have no fear" Hebrews 13:5.

As I sat there listening to the sermon, I pondered how it complimented the lesson I would be teaching later that morning.  We were telling the part of the Christmas story where an angel speaks to Joseph and tells him of impending danger.  To keep that from happening, the whole family would travel secretly to Egypt and stay there until the danger had passed.  Now by this time, Joseph had seen a thing or two.  Angels in dreams, pregnant virgins and God's strange handiwork of a young woman and himself as parents.  The bible does not give a lot of detail, but I am thinking at this point Joseph may have had a problem seeing Egypt as a land of "safety".  Wasn't that the place where God had delivered His people from?  I wondered if this is where Joseph starts thinking "here be dragons"?  Egypt was a big unknown for Joseph, and the history from that country was not one that created warm and fuzzy feelings.  Joseph's thoughts are not known on this subject, and I am just taking a little poetic license.  All we do know, is that Joseph did what the angel told him to do.  These lessons intertwined and created for me a message, giving me peace in my uncertainty, and hope for the coming year.

It is amazing to me that God will take a lesson that is very basic, and one that I have taught a hundred times before and make it into something new.  God seeks to speak with us, and He will use any way we allow Him.  Even through the little stories we share with our kids.