God continues to re-affirm the importance of quality time, and apparent ability He has given me to demonstrate this love language. My teaching style is primarily testimonial, so please take this post as such…a testimony to the greatness of God. My prayer is that as you read it, you too will seek out moments of sacrifice in which you can invest in people….
Most of you know that I teach in public school. We have roughly 1,000 students. We also have a club called FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes). The sponsor asked if I would give the message on Friday morning, and of course I said yes. This was the first meeting of the year, and I was blessed to see 60 kids show up at 7:30am to check it out. They get some volleyball time before we begin, and I started playing with this group of guys, one of which I have in class…let me give you some background on this kid…we will call him Eddie.
The first couple of days of school are usually the days when the kids are going to be on their best behavior, because they don’t know how far they can push you yet…so if you have a kid acting up during this time, its a safe bet that they will be trouble….its best to nip this early on, and that is exactly what I did. By yesterday, just two weeks into the school year, we had already had two hallway conferences, time out, I had spoken to his coach about his behavior, and I called home and talked to his dad. Eddie waked into FCA with his shirt untucked (out of dress code), chewing gum, and being loud. So I, in trying to be consistant in his discipline, walked over to him to let him know he needed to tuck in his shirt and spit out the gum. I wasn’t angry, and my body language didn’t let him know he was about to get reprimanded, so he said to me “Miss Mallory, I really can’t serve, watch this”. He proceded to hit the ball with his fist and he was right…he couldn’t serve…the other boys laughed at him, and right then the Holy Spirit spoke to me. I immediately forgot about his gum chewing and the sloppy way he was dressed. I took the ball and showed him how to hit it with his flat hand, then let him try..he did great, I must say the serve was beautiful.
That afternoon, I had totally forgot about the volleyball lesson earlier in the day. Eddie had not. He walked in and asked me if I would be helping with FCA all year. Then he turned to another boy and told him how I had shown him how to serve the volleyball this morning and how he finally knew how, the other boy said, “cool, i’m coming to FCA next week”……It just so happened that the FCA sponsor asked me earlier in the day to deliver the weekly devotion this year….I told her I would pray about it. When Eddie asked me this, that pretty much sealed the deal. I told him, “you bet I will”.
Im hoping you are looking past me in this as seeing the importance of investing and giving others people your time and attention. It could be a 2 hour conversation, a 2 minute volleyball lesson, or a 2 second smile…all of it matters when it comes to giving to others and spending time with them. I pray you will seek out people today that you can show the unconditional love of Christ by spending time with them.
Pray for Eddie…he is a cool kid, you really would love hanging out with him in heaven…and hes not a bad volleyball player either 😉
Peace, tdm
trying to make Him famous 