Cool strategy!

From across the gym at STARTS, "Frederick" comes running towards me.  He has a serious look on his face.  

Backstory: I had told the kids to put away the foam blocks they had used for castle building (and destruction!) a couple of minutes earlier. 

Back to my story: "What's wrong, Frederick?"  

"They're hitting me, so I can't be there with them!"

This is when I had a "Holy Spirit moment" (Luke 21:15).  Instead of brushing him aside as just another whiny, complaining kid, I hunched down till we were at eye-level and I said to him: "What do you think of this idea; they did something to you that wasn't nice.  You go back there and help them clean up the foam blocks, anyway - they will be so embarrassed that they treated you badly, and they won't know what to say when you help them!"

To my amazement, he straightened his posture, his face lit up with a determined expression, he whirled around on his heel and jogged back to the "construction site" to help his adversaries!

This became as much a lesson for me as it did for Frederick – perhaps more. I learned something about trusting the Lord for the words and the wisdom to handle situations. I also was reminded of the importance of simply showing up; if you don’t, the word or the wisdom The Holy Spirit gives you will have no situation in which to come alive.

What were you doing when you were 12?

Prior to our our February Missionary for a Day trip to Mexicali I was prompted to think about what I did when I was 12 years old.  At that time I wasn’t exactly tearing it up intellectual at school, however, I recall that a lot of time was spent tearing up the turf in some local park. Not on purpose, mind you; it was reckless slide tackling to compensate for undeveloped skills during pick-up games of soccer.  After I had cleaned the muck off my “leisure wear” I often headed over to the local Salvation Army where I played – I use that term loosely – the alto horn in the youth band.

A few days before heading off to Mexicali with our usual solid numbers of volunteers I got a call from Donald Ausherman.  It’d been a while since he had come with us, but with his 12 year old daughter Catherine,  he would like to join us for our next trip.  When we met Saturday morning at about 5:45 a.m., they had already traveled for an hour before they met up with us!  I never got out of bed at anything remotely close to that time when I was 12.  But Catherine did, and then some:  she recently had baked a hundred cookies and a mountain of breads to raise funds for YesWeServe, and she was bringing the proceeds - $135.00 – in an envelope that morning.  How cool is that?!

She reminded me of the story in the Bible about Jesus at 12: He astounded the Bible scholars in the Temple with his insight and wisdom when He visited during Passover with his family.  Let’s be creative in how we arrange our lives “To be about my Father’s business”.  

Even if many of us are way past 12.