Jubilation

I am also so grateful to be able to speak more freely about faith in Jesus during class. In partiuclar, the 8th grade Bible course has been fantastic this week and last week. We were talking about the character trait of this week which is Be Considerate. I began by asking the students why it was so important to be considerate of and towards others. They had good answers but I decided to go deeper. I then asked a tough question; a tough question that I've had to work through before as well. "What gives you self-worth?" In other words, what gives you your worth as a human being? Not expexpectedly, they were giving me pretty surface answers like 'because Jesus died for us or my mothers love or something of the sort.' (all legitamate) After and during I was worried about what to say next and how to proceed in order to go deeper still. So, then and there in my mind I was praying for God to intervene in my words and help me portray His mesage. I can't remember the last time that I read or heard about God being a clay maker, but he Lord answered and that is what came to mind.

First, we sat in silence (for they were extra rowdy this day) for two minutes. I believe this calmed them down enough for me to really talk with them. I spoke about how a clay pot maker loves each one of his pots equally and each are valued the same because he made them. I then spoke about our worth coming by the fact that God made us. I spoke for nearly ten minutes while sitting in my chair looking out at al the staring faces. It was amazing. Their hands stopped fidgeting, their eyes were fixed on mine, and their ears were open wide to let the truths of God's love come in. Afterwards, Julia, and 8th grader that we have been particularly praying for spoke first. She calmly said, "That story makes me believe in God." (Although shis is one who's family believes so strongly in evolution that they feel they can't believe in God. Possibly other reasons, of course, but that is the short of what I've been told) Not only that, another 8th grader who is really a good kid, though closed off a lot, came to me as well. We talked for 20 minutes after class about all the kinds of questions involving God. Like I said, fantastic class periods. I can't wait for more to come.