diagramming sentences can instill a love of logic and relation

Your hands have made me and fashioned me;

Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments. Psalm 119:73

Pretty much all that I am thinking about...daydreaming about these days in those free moments that open up on my way trundling across town or folding clothes into neat stacks or emptying the dishwasher yet one more time, those kind of moments, is how to be the best English teacher ever: how can I engage my students with the truth so that they will become worldchangers, that they will find their joy walking in the footsteps of Jesus? 

How can I get their selves, their souls, to engage with the things of eternal value, when life twists and shouts so much inconsequential vapidness?

Psalm 119 is a lot like the 1000 Gifts list I am creating; verse after verse reminds the writer of the Truth: God made me, loves me and knows what is best for me. He explores the imagery, nuances, ramifications of this Truth, 178 times.  

Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem of twenty-two stanzas, following the letters of the Hebrew alphabet; within a stanza, each verse begins with the same Hebrew letter. The structure forces the writer to slow down and consider His subject, much like writing a sonnet.  This is no quick text or tweet or Facebook like.

Psalm 119 is a discipline.  A choice to be intentional.  To engage.  And make a difference for generations stretching into eternity.

So be it.