Encouragement

We are who HE says we are

by Georgina Tennant
01/05/17
Free to Share
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

This week God used another everyday situation to spark a reflection about a deeper truth.  On Wednesday afternoon I had a "Bad Lesson" with capital letters. Anyone else who is a teacher will know the kind I'm talking about. For those fortunate enough never to have had this experience, let me paint a picture. It is last period (read 'high on sugar from lunch and desperate for it to be the end of the day,' - the students not me!). Eleven fifteen-year-old boys and five fifteen-year-old girls arrive at your door (read 'crash along the corridor yelling at each other,'). They are expected to achieve D or E grades and you are trying to get across to them the finer points of 'Romeo and Juliet.' You just about get them seated; three don't have pens, four don't have books and your laptop has frozen. I won't go on - the class is not the point of my story, other than to say they are the kind of class you love AND dread. On a good day you come out feeling proud of all you've taught them and the progress they're making. On a bad one, you feel like you've been flattened by a heavyweight boxer when the fifty minutes are up. This was one of those lessons.

On this particular day, complaints about the behaviour of my class were made to a Senior Leader in an email, copying in my Head of Department and Second in Department. It wasn't about me directly, but it left me feeling rubbish. I felt like jumping to my own defence - the picture painted was not representative of the overall picture and I looked bad! Instead I sought out my Head of Department for advice.

The good bit was what happened next. The reaction of my Department Head and Second was to rally round, support me, dampen down what had been said, remind me how impressed they were by how I usually handle that class and reassure me that we all have tough days. I felt supported and protected and what could have left me in a heap, turned into a passing moment. Although it could have knocked me down in my own eyes and those of my colleagues, the incident was placed in its context - one where I usually work hard, have a good reputation and am valued; one bad lesson didn’t lead me or others to conclude that I was a bad teacher, because my position, my standing was otherwise secure.

I'm sure you're wondering by now why I'm telling you all this, where this is going and what it has to do with the theme of my title. As I reflected later, it struck me that how the incident at school panned out could be compared to how we can live when we're secure in who we are in Christ. Even when things go wrong, or we go wrong, we are still his, precious in his sight and secure in his love for us.

How often we beat ourselves up and put ourselves down when things knock us off balance as Christians, when we should be reminding ourselves of our secure position and standing in Christ. When we don't perform as well as we perceive we should, we conclude that we're worthless, useless and no good. If we are left out of an occasion we long to join in, we think of ourselves as unlovable. When we don't feel we've handled our children well as parents, we navigate a minefield of guilt and feelings of failure. We compare ourselves to others and conclude that we come up short.

But we have someone better than the best most supportive human boss to come alongside us and defend us when the world, the flesh and the devil start to close in. God loves us. Jesus died for us. If God is for us, who can be against us? If we read his word we'll find out what he thinks of us and that gives us hope to cling to, even on our worst days. Feeling worthless? Jesus loved us enough to die so we could be friends with the father. Hopeless? He promises to give us hope and a future. Incomplete? He'll always complete what he started. A failure? He works all things out for the good of those who love him. Weak and pathetic? He says we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. With a God who says things like that about us, we can learn to move on from a bad moment, a bad day.

Will we respond to his voice, calling us to spend time with him, so we can learn a little better how to stomp on the negative voices that strive to keep us down? Will we lean harder into him, to hear the whisper of the one who calls us by name? If we will, we will begin to gratefully see that we are not what the sum total of a bad moment, a bad day, a difficult conversation implies we are. We are who he says we are and he loves us more than we could ever know.