I remember long nights at the dinner table staring at my homework, all I wanted was for it to be done. My dad sat next to me in support, but would watch me make an error in step one of a 10 step math problem, and not correct me until I got all the way through it, with the wrong answer. Oh how frustrated I would get. Dad, you knew it was wrong all along! Why couldn’t you tell me? Better yet, why didn’t you give me the answer to begin with?
We spent this last week at an all boys’ orphanage in Vinto. I had fun singing songs as the boys stared at me with giggles on their faces as I sang in my chipmunk voice, or an off-tuned opera singer. I loved on them as we did (more like attempted) headstands, and cartwheels throughout the front yard and tickled them when they fell. We laughed over playing patty cake as fast as humanly possible, we had a blast…but sit me down with one of those boys to help with their homework, and most of my energy went toward fighting frustration.
I worked with a 12 year old who’s homework was to write 20 words that started with the letter ‘a.’ He asked me for the answers. When I didn’t give them, he turned to vocabulary cards to cheat by copying right off of them. When I challenged him, by giving him a word, even a 3 letter one, he needed my help to spell it. Two letters into the word, he would be distracted by a peer for 7 minutes before I could get him refocused on his paper. Sometimes another orphan would try to give an answer, often wrong. When I told him the letters in a word, I had to point to what a ‘d’ was because he didn’t know how to write it. I felt his dependency. I felt like I was giving him the easy way out. I felt like I was being taken advantage of. I felt like I wasn’t helping this child to learn.
And then I realized…I’m no different than him.
God knows best. He has the answers. The correct ones. The best ones.
We turn to Him for easy things, we turn to Him for difficult things, yet we act like an untrusting child when we hear his response. Sometimes we need to learn the lesson to get the answer. Sometimes we get the lesson and still don’t follow the answer, often times because we still can’t accept it. When He doesn’t give us immediate gratification, we search for alternative paths. When He gives us answers, we still want more. Even when we have the answers, we get easily distracted and don’t follow. Or we don’t like what we hear, and so we turn to others for answers. Sometimes we simply believe that we know best, and never turn to Him at all.
Father, thank you for having all the answers. Thank you for having the best ones. Help me to be open to hearing your response, not turning to others, and never questioning the lesson.
And thanks dad. Thanks Dad.
For more photos click here
