HOMESCHOOLED
In the Classroom with God
July 19th, 2023
See, I’ve been in the classroom lately. With God. And while the lessons have been extremely difficult, excruciatingly painful, exhaustingly real, they also are the
purpose of a patient Teacher’s Lesson Plan—extravagantly designed for my good and ultimately His use. And He is (home)schooling me so I may know that He has my best interests strategically in sync with the beat of His heart.
TODAY’S LESSON: I am Flimsy; People are Fickle; God is Faithful
Whew! Life ain’t for wimps, is it? My eighty-six-year-old mom has even been remarking that lately. It is heavy. Burdensome. Even if you could fit it in a bag, you couldn’t carry it. The thing is, we were never meant to carry it anyway.
You know how it is. Stuff accumulates, right? Do you remember when you first got out on your own? Or when you were newly married? You didn’t have anything! It didn’t take long then to move. Everything fit in the back of your car. Your parents moved you to college in a station wagon, along with the whole family riding along on that road trip. You got your first apartment. The studio. It was empty because you had nothing to put into it! The cupboards were bare, the fridge barren, the room held a bed and a coffee table and the TV you borrowed from your parent’s guest bedroom. It’s all you had. There wasn’t a lot of baggage back then, you remember.
Then, we moved a little over a year ago. It took months to go through all I had amassed, weeks to pack it, days to move it, and some stuff is still stored in boxes in the basement. Truckloads. I was almost envious of the time fifteen years ago when I had a housefire, and everything was a total loss. There was nothing to move on that day. How did I quantify so much junk again?! is what I pondered while I heaped things in piles to discard or give away.
There’s an entire series dedicated to being a hoarder. Sometimes they call those kinds of folk packrats. There are studies presenting an emotional instability or mental issues which causes a person to stockpile things beyond reason. In fact, it is considered an addiction. They have help and sell hope for people who struggle with this, and there is offered Clutterers Anonymous, a 12-step treatment program which counsels and supplies encouragement and solutions to those in recovery.
But what about those of us—likely the entire universe—who hoard our hatred, stash our suffering, bottle-up bitterness, accumulate anguish, reserve resentments, gather grief, amass anger, save our rage? Collecting all our emotions as if they are keepsakes, stuffing down that shame, wielding guilt because we need protective arms-length transactions, so no one gets close. We protect secrets like they’re our greatest treasures, because, truly, we can’t take them out to decipher them, then reconcile it so we can move on. We pack our bags with painful memories and emotions we can’t process as if we are going on a long trip, and truth is, the trip will last a lifetime, hauling around baggage stuffed with everything we have pressed inside for so long.
Our God is so faithful. He knows how fragile even His toughest children are. He knows I am flimsy, and I may come undone in a fraction of a moment. He also knows I am a hardened emotionalist. He knows I have stuffed a lifetime of experiences in the fissures of my soul, and I’d rather stiffen up than let His grace shine through my brokenness. He also knows that the greatest proving ground is one hard fought and eventually won, and that my shards might just be the pieces that save someone else’s life.
God knows humanity is fickle. He may have been saddened, but He has never been surprised by my instability and unpredictability. He hasn’t wrung His hands, hoping He could figure me out someday. He instead sat down and patiently waited for me to come to the end of myself. In spite of me, He has remained faithful. He has let me drag around my baggage; all the times I have refused to unpack, He simply, silently lingered. He remained. He was the one Who stayed.
He will be there ‘til the end. When life and all its trappings get in the way, when it all feels rather frail and our hope has grown dainty, when our passion and zest for the world is whimsical and we turn our backs on what is righteous, He still is immutable and unchanging and unfluctuating. He will outlast all of it. And if you let Him, He will come right in, even carry your baggage in for you, and before you know it, He will help you unpack.
“Yesterday is heavy. Put it down.”
Psalm 95:7b-8a, ‘Today, if only you would hear His voice, “Do not harden your hearts.”’ (NIV)
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:
What emotions are you able to name that you hoard or hide inside that might be destructive to you? _______________________________________________________________________________________
Today, what is one thing you are hanging onto, that you will consider letting go of and allowing God to work? ______________________________________________________________________________
‘I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you, instructing you and guiding you along the pathway for your life. I will advise you along the way and lead you forth with My eyes as your guide. So, don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn when I take you where you’ve not been before. Don’t make Me tug you and pull you along. Just come with Me!”’ (Psalm 32:8-9, TPT)
