Really, I wear Muna Raawf's necklace as my reminder

Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
    bind them around your neck,
    write them on the tablet of your heart.

Then you will win favor and a good name
    in the sight of God and man. Proverbs 3:3-4

Boy I sure made my little kiddos’ eyes pop yesterday.  They walked into class to face a pretty typical bellwork and a raving teacher harshly correcting the slightest twinge of the students wearing colored shirts, while heaping chocolate chips on the notebooks of the students wearing black shirts and ignoring completely the students wearing white shirts. And it turned out to be a pretty complicated quiz to see if they understood hypothesis, independent variable, and data collection, but man it sure showed that how you treat people matters. The numbers on my little white board chart shot across the margins.  I also ran this unit at a Wildcat, taking off from the graveyard scene in Tom Sawyer and the impact of random acts of kindness, and everywhere they go, the three different graphs vividly quantify the truth of this verse.

And may they know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Except Cameron changed it the second time through, they must know we are Christians by our love. 

And my heart is pretty broken up because one of my very own kiddos made international news yesterday with his “You deserve rape” signs, and in the world of Facebook someone was marveling that he had sat in the very same Bible classes with him and walked out with a whole different worldview. But what is even more knife-twisting-in-my-heart is the rest of the comments, and the not-getting-it from so many of my kiddos. Dear Jesus.

But I have a high priest who is able to sympathize with my weaknesses, One who has been tested in every way as I am, yet without sin. And I know that this high priest also struggled to communicate through the fog-that-is-sinful-thinking with His students.  With me. With me in process. May Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is heaven.

But at the very least, let me return to my dorky childhood and my daily prayer, Philippians 4:5, The Living Bible version, Let everyone see that I am unselfish and kind in all that I do.

His kindness leads to repentance. May I be His kindness carrier, with love and faithfulness bound around my neck, written on the tablet of my heart.

Dear Jesus.