"GPS....................................."

Monday marked the beginning of our second full week of school, the first ten days given to getting the kids readjusted to room changes, renewing old acquaintance after summer break, testing the waters on just how well what’s down on paper works when rubber meets the road. Individual schedules have been learned, in so far as taking each child to specials such as art, music, and library, and now we have begun to introduce the basics: mathematics, vocabulary, working with clocks and money. It’s an Autism unit, so the room is almost always alive with the sound of someone crying, or screaming, or just filling the air with excited jabber. Such is the assignment. Keeping it from becoming, like any other job, merely a numbering of days, a paycheck and nothing more, requires a heart for what you’re doing, a belief that it matters, a remembering that He holds it all in His hands… I swung up the expressway exit ramp on my way to work this morning, a red traffic light momentarily halting further progress. There, on the grassy tract just outside my window lay scattered multiple beer cans, pop bottles, and one or two crumpled up empty snack bags. It irritated me, at least to some degree. How often have I pulled up elsewhere and, waiting to turn, noted lengthy piles of discarded cigarette butts, drivers apparently finding such pause to be excellent opportunity to empty their ashtrays and the mess left for the city sweeper to catch next time around. What brings humanity to such a place that there is no sanctity at all in the little things, life is but a “me, myself, and I” survival existence? Surely when His purpose for us is not part of the equation, it has to be, if nothing else, lonely out there……