Hardest Work, Fullest Life - The Art of Believing

It's Friday morning and I'm straightening chairs, hoping to bring some sort of order to this room where the 300 children will come in and out and sing and run and talk and... learn?  Maybe?  And music will be made and there will be laughter and there will be frustration and there will be impatience.  And I will fail today.  Like I feel like I've failed every day this week.  And I'm tired.  And it's Friday.  And I straighten the chairs.

I have the words spinning in my brain, words that I've read from the blogs of women who are shaking up this world for Jesus, who are living as the Esther Generation.  They are mothers and they are speakers and they are teachers and they are women of God... And I wonder if I have a place among them?  And I believe that I do because Jesus is for all and the calling of the gospel is for all and the commission to be Jesus to the world and to allow Holy Spirit to flow through me is a call for all.

So I ask for strength, and I ask for help to do the job that God has called me to do today.  And I plead for eyes to See, to look into their faces and SEE... the stories and the hope and the future and to live out the work that He has called me to do.

I go back to John, and Jesus says that the work that He has called us to do is to believe in the One that the Father has sent... And maybe that is the hardest work of all.

To believe that I, who fail daily, raising my voice in impatience, forgetting to See their faces - that I could be an instrument in the hand of God for them today.  Maybe that is the hardest work.

To believe that there is Redemption in every moment.  To believe that in the here and now, in the mundane and the frustrating. God. Is. At. Work.  And it has NOTHING to do with me.  Maybe that is the hardest work.

And maybe that is the Fullest Life.

To bow the knee and to confess my weakness, to confess my own need, to confess that I am nothing.  And I am full of pride.  And I am full of self-centeredness.  Full of every broken thing that is wrong with this world.  Full and still so empty.  I am flesh.  I am but dust and to dust I will return.

And yet.  And yet.  And YET.  He has equipped me for good works.  And this is the Best Work.  To believe in the One He has Sent.  To believe in the Hope of Glory.  Christ in me.  Christ IN me.  CHRIST IN ME!  And I speak it out loud in the silence of  a classroom during the one moment for the next eight hours where life will not be chaos:

Help me to do Your work.  Help me to believe you.  I believe, Lord!  Help my unbelief!

And Spirit falls and Grace wraps around.  The sun comes up on the second day of Spring.  And it is forward.  And it is always enough.  And He is here and He is good and we are loved.  Now.