And grammar helps us think about purpose.

Rejoice

Is a clear command;

Rise up and do joy again,

An action verb form.

May my meditation be pleasing to Him,
    for I rejoice in the Lord. Psalm 104:34

“For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to Your word.” Luke 2:37-38

And part of my Wednesday prayer for myself is a response to this command: And may I live in the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Trust and obey.

Two more action verbs.

Yesterday the first grade teachers asked me to model a grammar lesson, so again and again I got to talk to rooms of six-year-olds about nouns and verbs.

And this time I remembered to right up front to teach MY signal for attention: Give me five. Give me your eyes, your ears, your mouths, your fingers and your thinking. So we practiced that a few times just to make sure we all understood the expectations.

Those kiddos could all rattle off “person, place or thing.” (Idea is added in third grade.) So we played “I spy with my little eye,” and worked with our elbow partner writing down verbs and nouns and drawing pictures of them and then we waved our fingers to show V for verbs and N for nouns and all was good. And simple. And we talked about why we might need to know how to use these cool words we were learning to read and write. And they all nodded their heads in agreement, but really, I am thinking that these question words a little bit abstract for this crew.

But now a bunch of us are old and sad and the Why and How questions are big and glaring and keeps us up at night. And my Joy in the Holy Spirit Day got a little rough at the end, in spite of all my good intentions. A friend Facebook posted some lyrics from the new U2 album that asks a question like Oh Jesus, if I’m still Your friend… what the hell is this all about? I received a lamenting letter about hope deferred. And my daily prayers include a lot of kiddos who are staring at the messiness of life and not even asking. Just shrugging, which is even more aching.

And I think that actually the Hamilton song Rise Up is going to be my go to echo chamber for this day as I am about to strap in my bike helmet and double-glove my fingers, and ride out into the day.

Rise up and do joy again.

Trust. Obey.

And

Rise Up.

For nothing will be impossible with God.