"Memories...................."

This is my tenth year working in Elementary Education with Special-Ed kids. There is a cork board frame positioned in front of me to the rear of my computer desk, filled with snapshots I’ve taken along the way. I like to look at their faces and remember. In truth, they gave to me as much or more than I did them; and, in looking back, it’s unlikely that my tutorial encounter with them accomplished anything of any real significance. No “Helen Keller breakthroughs”. Just trying to help them take another step, to move forward in some way. This year one young fellow has been able to learn how to count coins, pennies, nickels, and dimes; and, if he can retain that over these summer months, we’ll move on to quarters when we return. It is the “little” things that make it worthwhile. You look back, see all you mistakes, and wonder; but would take nothing for having been there for the journey. It’s the same with the rescue mission and the Detention Center, too. I often ask myself if the past decade has been merely about my ego, opportunity for me to impose my Biblical views on a captive audience. Has there really been anything worthwhile come of our taking the Gospel to such venues? Then the face of one girl reappears in my mind, how there, in the beginning, it was marked with hurt and anger at life as she had found it to be; and slowly, but surely, the pain therein expressed melted over the months that marked our visits. Did we ever hear her confess Christ? No; yet her smile and her manner with us gave witness of change. I do believe. I do not regret. I am thankful for doors that He has opened, for His grace alive in me…