The Greatest Blessing of All

 

A wave of nostalgia blindsided me as I took down the last of my students’ artwork from the show. As I pulled out the last of the pushpins, I realized that I wouldn’t be doing this again as I’m retiring this year. God had blessed me so much with this career as an art teacher. I made wonderful friends with some of my colleagues, had fun teaching, made a good salary, learned a lot about art and teaching kids. As I thought about how I happened on this job, I stood in awe of God’s amazing provision and timing.

One afternoon after returning from picking up my kids from school, I listened to my answering machine and heard the rich. deep voice of a man asking me to interview at a school called, The Circle of Courage. I figured it was a private school, but I didn’t’ remember applying for the position of an art teacher. The next day I discovered it turned out to be a public special education school. They had seen my application on-line. Since I had my undergraduate degree in both art and my masters in special education, I got the job, which turned out to be a God-send.

Not only had God provided me with a job, he brought great colleagues around me who became good friends. Yet that day of the art show deinstallation, I wasn’t reflecting on that particular aspect of my job. I was thinking about God’s faithfulness to me over the years. It brought on more waves of nostalgia as I reflected on how deeply God had blessed us.

My husband and I started out poor, living in Vermont on a shoestring budget. He ate a lot of bologna sandwiches and I cooked many casseroles. Though I had a part time job teaching art, at that time Vermont paid teachers less than forty of the other fifty states. As one realtor proclaimed, we were church mouse poor.

When we moved back to New York with a beautiful new baby, we lived with our mother in law for a while. Then we rented for a number of years after that. I kept a tight grip on the money and pinched every penny. We finally bought our first house, an 800 square foot former one room school house divided into five tiny rooms: Kitchen and breakfast nook, two bedrooms, living room and small bathroom. While crowded with three children, both my husband and I have fond memories of the house and our time with the children.

As I drove home and entered our present home, I was very thankful for our house of nearly thirty years, but nostalgic for the times our children were younger and grew up here. While they never had a lot of material things, I always tried to do as many free things as possible with them and tried to raise them with large doses of love and Christian principles. While we had our fair share of problems, challenges and crisis, God always saw us through.

My husband and I just celebrated our forty first year of marriage, and I saw the tremendous blessing of the Lord for persevering, being faithful and staying married through thick and thin. Not only did we celebrate our anniversary, but I celebrated my sixty-sixth birthday! Perhaps all of this celebrating brought on my thankfulness and nostalgic waves, which began to subside as I contemplated the wonderful life God has given me.

Throughout all of these years I have seen God open the heavens and pour out a blessing—in my job, with friends, family, children, career, ministry and church. Just the other day my two daughters, son-in-law and one-and-a-half-year-old grandson went to a museum together for my birthday and out to dinner. It was a wonderful time together! The week before I had a delicious dinner that my daughter in law cooked for me, while we played with our other two grandchildren. Yesterday, I was able to go to attend a symposium and hear the bagpipes for St. Patrick’s Day. This week I’ll go out to dinner with friends. Next week, my friends are going to take me to the Botanical Gardens for the Orchid Show, one of my favorite places to go.

These are just samples of how richly God has blessed me and my family, not because we’re special, but because of his great love and faithfulness. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke:11:13 ESV).

God desires to bless, but we must follow His principles. They are not a guarantee of material blessing, but of spiritual blessing. He desires to give us more of His Holy Spirit, which then intercedes and helps us to have the power to obey God and His Word. As we obey godly principals of tithing, trusting God with our money, our relationships, our emotions, our careers, our children and family, He pours out the blesses. Sometimes they are material, but often not. It took many years of sowing good seeds to reap a good return, even though I sewed some really wild oats in my earlier years! God is merciful, loving and gracious and want all of us to live in His presence, which is the greatest blessing of all!