Part Two: Misadventures in Teaching

Yesterday morning I awoke in the murkiness of predawn, immediately aware that in the next few hours, I would be teaching my friend's  Bible study (see yesterday's posting You Want Me To Do What??).   Even though it was a bit earlier than usual, I slipped out of bed, turned on the coffee, and plunged into my morning Bible reading.  Of all days, I did not want to face this day without a covering of God's Word snapped into place.

I follow a reading schedule that takes me through the Bible in a year.  The Old Testament passage for the day made me smile, no random link to my plans, but spot on as if God knew exactly what I needed to read.   I finished up the last chapter of Deuteronomy and slid into the first chapter of Joshua.  This is what I read:

Have I not commanded you?
Be strong and of good courage,
be not frightened,
neither be dismayed,
for the LORD your God is with you
wherever you go.
                       Joshua 1.9

What a great verse for this morning, I thought, but I felt neither nervous nor dismayed.  This is going to be a piece of cake.  I can do this thing.  I headed out, lesson prepared and applications written in the margins.

I felt surprisingly calm in the teacher's meeting that preceded the Bible study.  I took a break in the restroom on my way to class.  Turning the corner, I was aware of a little unraveling around the edges, knowing in the next few minutes what I would face.  "Please LORD, don't let my discomfort be a distraction," I whispered as I washed my hands.  Glancing in the mirror, I realized my eyes looked not confident but wild.  Bad move. And my hair, well, not a strand was behaving at all.  Not a good visual to have in mind.

I walked into the classroom and suddenly saw not the women of the study sitting around the table, but every fear imaginable prancing around the room, as if I had been tricked into a parlor of doom.  I felt like a shy preschooler who had wandered into the wrong classroom.

"I am with you wherever you go."  I remembered that verse, clear and sure.  It was like a shield around me.  I walked in, holding Jesus's hand.  I was not alone.

Fears from years ago had planned a reunion, including all the usual suspects from reciting poems in front of the class in seventh grade to my college class in foreign relations where 80 percent of the grade was jousting with cut-throat pre-law students.  A lifetime of fears had converged, coming out from the miry bog.  And God reminded me to "Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds."  Psalm 68.30  They are only phantoms.

"Go away," I almost said out loud.  "You are not welcome here."

I closed the classroom door, and with that, I started the lesson, digging through God's Word with fifteen other women for the next hour.  There were a few awkward moments of silence and probably eighty percent of what I was going to say remained scribbled in the margins, but there was a sweet bonding as woman after woman shared how God's Word was charging them and changing them.  We all left a little different.

And as God's truth emerged from those pages of Scripture, I realized that I was not the Teacher at all.
Just a child, learning another dimension of the reality of His Presence.  Even in this.