When we are called to walk through the valley of the shadow of death…

I had a difficult time choosing the photographic image that is the thumbnail for this post. How do you choose a valley that looks like it has the shadow of death hanging over it? In the end, I picked a place that seemed empty, dark, and without hope. It is often those very places that God often calls us.

The first building that I worked was easily the best educational environment that I have ever been a part of, either as a student or as a teacher. I left after three years. I wanted to come home. And man, it was maybe the mistake of a lifetime. I was young, and thought I was invincible. I wasn’t. Mike Tyson had this beautiful quote, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I would live that quote for the next eighteen years. I still laugh when I type Tyson’s words. His words are so true.

Sometimes, I tell my wife that I regret leaving my first school and coming back to Kingsport. She responds aptly, “But if you hadn’t left, you wouldn’t have met me. We wouldn’t have this great family.” True that. I also wouldn’t have met so many great students and worked with so many great colleagues. God took an apparent wrong turn, and made something beautiful come out of it. Professionally, coming home was death by a thousand cuts. The teacher who once dreamed of being principal just hoped he’d be asked back the next year. It was pretty brutal. As a teacher, I improved greatly. I feel that the last year that I taught was my best. My job was to serve my students, and I did that. But I couldn’t have been more different than those leading me, and over time, that was the deal breaker. God says that to live in him, our old selves must die. It is one thing to read those words, it is quite another to live them. Even now, I still sometimes feel like I am not where I belong.

²³ And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. ~ Luke 9: 23

If you choose to be good at your job, you had better be ready to suffer the same injustices that the people of your community suffer on a daily basis. If your students and their families live in the valley of the shadow of death, you will walk with them arm and arm whether you like it our not. I am gonna tell you right now, it is going to be harder than you can ever imagine. It is also going to be more rewarding than you can envision. You will be blessed, but you need to be ready to get punched in the mouth. Satan wants under-served children trapped. He wants to indefinitely perpetuate the cycle of drugs, violence, and broken families. He never wants them to see the sun drenched world above the canyon rim.

I am reminded of Mother Theresa. I don’t claim to know a lot about her, but her witness is not lost on me. She chose to live a life of poverty, and to minister to those in the gutters of Calcutta. She chose to let Jesus take her to the worst places that humanity can invent. She went there to bring people the Good News. I do recognize the glimmer in her eyes. I see that same glimmer in the eyes of educators who find a way to bring light into a darkness which threatens to overtake their every step.

Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love. ~ Mother Teresa

As a Christian educator on the front lines of delivering the Gospel, there are gonna be days when you wonder what you have gotten yourself into. Believe me, that is going to happen. Just remember that the God who sent you into the valley will not abandon you. While we might not be able to see God’s greater purpose while walking in the valley, we can still do small things with great love. God can take those small offerings, and multiply them.

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. II Corinthians 12

ProTip: This is how I fight my battles…It may look like I’m surrounded, but I’m surrounded by You(Jesus). ~ Michael W. Smith (Elyssa Smith, 2018)