It is final exam week here in Korea. Students are traveling to take exams, wearing masks, and, of course, talking to friends. It's absolutely breath-taking outside but hardly anyone has stopped to notice because they are too busy studying.

I have been extremely busy with grading. But I had an encounter that was a highlight this week. 

I was watching a rather aggressive young Korean man talk to a black woman from the U.K.. I was just starting to notice that their interaction (the man) was rather loud. He was explaining something and was rather animated. And then I recognized him.

It was a student from my Screen English class a few semesters ago. I said, "I remember you!"

He looked at me, and then his eyes lit up. "I really enjoyed Screen English Class and I still meet members of my group!" 

He was referring to the group that he had worked with that semester and the final project. They had changed the ending of the movie Dead Poets Society. The students have to think through romanticism and write it into their scripts and then perform it in class or as a short video clip.  

"I appreciate that. For that class, I don't have to follow the rules." I was referring to the fact that I had complete freedom to design that class the way I wanted. I had also just had a less than pleasant conversation with administration about the rules that needed to followed for other classes. Rules that I genuinely believe are not fair on the students. And then the black woman spoke up.

"He means that! I know he does not like studying." She proceeded to move him and herself over toward my car while I processed what she had said.

The three of us chatted beside my car for a few minutes. We then said our goodbyes and I got in my car.

The whole encounter got me thinking about the story of Jesus healing ten men with leprosy. He tells them to show themselves to the priests. Only one man, a Samaritan, comes back and thanks him. 

Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well." Luke 17:17-19

I have often been frustrated with teaching because I am never sure if they learned anything. I am also left wondering if all the work that I put into teaching makes any difference. 

This young, aggressive, Korean man had given me some appreciated feedback. He represented the Samaritan in the story. He didn't exactly come back and say thank you, but the encounter was one that I appreciated and needed on exam week. 

His aggressiveness marked him as different. I remembered that I had spent more than a little time deflecting his opinions and helping his group members get used to his blunt ways. He was definitely not an easy student. 

There are students who behave well in class, are quiet when you need them to be quiet, and speak up when you want them to speak up. It's an English miracle that even happens with the way the education system works in Korea. 

And maybe there are more miracles out there...

For all of you who feel frustrated with your work, I just want to let you know that there is at least 10% you have helped. 10% were changed. I don't know if they came back and said thank you, but you changed them. What you do matters. 

​And all of this was just in time for summer session which begins next week...

Did you feel the temperature drop this month?  The very first cool day of Fall delights me.

Every single one.

This season gives me energy like no other season can.  The colors do wonder for my senses and I feel lighter.  I was enraptured in the light falling through the leaves of a tree this morning and stopped to take pictures!

That the atmosphere in this small town I live in could go from stifling and sticky to cool and crisp in a single afternoon feels almost like magic. It always surprises, but it shouldn't. It happens every year. 

Change, I am learning, is the most predictable thing in my life. 

Whether it's the seasons or relationships; my tastes or my reading habits--something is always changing. I can not control the changing but I can choose to revel in it, to rejoice.  The trick is to begin rejoicing now. 

Not just in anticipation of returning home, but in the quirky oddness of being so very away. Every season, EVERY one, has its charms. My prayer is, under Christ, to learn to love them all.

But here is the the light in fall!

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne

You, God, are my Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. You are my one constant. All else is change. You surprise in every season, but you keep bringing them with blessed consistency. You are the architect of change that disturbs and delights--and of the consistency that comforts and centers me like nothing else. 

This morning (and why not every morning?) I praise You for the consistency of change, and your great glory in all things. I love You.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8, NIV)

"I don't have _______."  "You are wasting my _______."  "I'm just killing ____."  "How do you fill your ________?"  Spending, keeping, marking, making... What is your sense of time?  

First and foremost, time is a gift.  Time is a creation of God, right after the second creation of God — light, which marks time.  In the very first chapter of Genesis, God separates light and darkness, calls one day and one night, and there was evening and morning — the beginning of time, which is declared good(Genesis 1:1-5).  Time is one of creation’s “goods”.  As Thomas Merton explains: “Time for the Christian is then the sphere of his spontaneity, a sacramental gift in which he can allow his freedom to deploy itself in joy.”

Do we receive  time as a good gift from God, the matrix  in which we can allow freedom to “deploy itself in joy”? Do we experience time as one of the many aspects of creation that we are to enjoy and to steward, or do we experience time as a taskmaster? Do we manage time, or does time manage us?

From God’s point of view there is lots of time, an eternity of it.  It follows that there will be plenty of time for what God intends to accomplish.  Personally, I have come to believe that God will give me the time to accomplish what is God’s will for me, and that is time “enough” for me.

The second reflection is that the Bible pushes us to understand time as the matrix of the sacred.  The God of Israel, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, was not a God of place.  Unlike the deities of other Ancient Near Eastern peoples, gods associated with temples, sacred springs, or groves of trees, the God of Israel was the God of events, of happenings in time.  The fact that the Divinity is manifested in history means that time is holy.  “The higher goal of spiritual living is not amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments,” Abraham Heschel writes.  “Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”

Living spiritually demands that we be “present tense” people.  The enormity of the concept of ‘God now” bears serious reflection for people who think their relationship with God is important.  Like Heschel, Paul Tillich believes: “There is no other way of judging time that to see it in the light of the eternal.” What is important about time, in short, is its “God content”.

The third aspect of time I want to discuss is that time is experienced differently in different situations.                   

According to John Donahue, “The quality of our experience always determines the actual rhythm of time.  When you are in pain, every moment slows down until it resembles a week.  When you are happy and really enjoying your life, time flies.”  Time spent with loved ones flies by.  Time spent on a deathbed drags almost unbearably for the loved ones gathered around it.  Three hours in the hospital waiting room during critical surgery is in “real time” much longer than the three hours spent on one’s favorite pastime.

The final reflection or aspect of time to ponder here is the fact that the only time we really have is the present moment, now. 

Now is a gift of God; that is why it is called the present.  The old cliché is true: the past is gone; the future is yet to be. 

If we don’t find God in this present moment, we are unlikely to encounter the Divine at all.  Paul deeply understood this truth and wrote to the Corinthians, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Time is more than chronology.  Time is opportunity.  The Hebrew prophets thought of history as a continuum of times, each filled with its content by God, and, therefore, each demanding a response from people.  The writers of the New Testament clearly thought of themselves as writing in the time of history.  And so we Christians have a particular reason to understand that time is a function of divine disclosure.  It is the arena of salvation.  It is “the means by which God makes use in order to reveal his gracious working.”  Time is valuable because God has entered time and brought eternity into it. 

From Ephesians, we must “make the most of the time” (5:16). What that will mean for each one of us is at the heart of the mystery of our individual and God-given vocation. 

Time exists in circles now.  Busy morning routines, getting children out the door before 8:15 in the morning, 9:00 am classes, lunch rituals of prayer, food, recording thankful moments, collecting children at the end of the work day, preparing meals, smiles and misbehavior around the dinner table with 3 boys, cleaning up after meals, bedtime routines, storytime, prayer, sleep, stillness.  And then I get up and do it all again.  These circles are beginning to spin.  

I have been counting gifts for over one year now.  I started this on Christmas day last year after reading Ann Voscamp's '1000 Gifts'.  With my whole heart, I endorse both reading her book and counting your own gifts over the next year.  Let's celebrate life and all of its beauty together.

Highlights from this month's list of gifts have been very special.  I saw some birds sitting on a snow covered tree singing praises (similar to the picture above).  My sons smiling and laughing are always good to boost my spirit.  My husband's thoughtfulness of a hot water bottle on my aching back.  Playful 'talks' with the baby.  Good meals with family and friends.  

Have you noticed that these things are not big?  These gifts are small things that warmed my heart, caught my attention, and let me notice the beauty in the everyday things.  What richness!

This is not to say that life is always good.  Sometimes I am amazed and paralyzed by my inadequacies, weaknesses, and attitude.  But isn't this the point?  When I can only see myself, I need to look around me to see goodness, light, love, and God.

Christmas day is a reminder that God is with us.  He was born in a barn filled with mud, muck, hay, pigs, and other animals.  He reaches down into our messy, mud-filled lives and does His best to get our attention.  

The beauty of this that I don't fully grasp is that He has chosen me.  Me?  My shame and inadequacies as a mother, wife, teacher, lover, friend, writer, cook, and occasionally, an artist, He knows me very well.  He changes me.  As I count gifts, as I become more and more grateful for life around me, He transforms me.  He is filling me with love, light, patience, and grace.  He is with me.

Isn't that the point of Christmas? God is with us.