Yeah, God knows . . .

God showed me the other day that He knows exactly what I need.

It was Tuesday and I was getting ready to go to tutoring when Mom asked me how I was enjoying tutoring. Being in a somewhat testy mood, I didn't feel like sugar-coating it and so I told her exactly how I felt. It's not that tutoring has been terrible, it's just that it hasn't been quite what I had hoped. I had hoped that tutoring would give me good experience and also give me a chance to really help other people.
Well, it has been really rewarding some of the time, but the rest of the time it can be really frustrating. Instead of feeling like you're actually helping people learn something new, a lot of the time it only feels like you're only trying to help them sort out something that has been learned wrong and is currently a jumbled mess in their head. If you have ever tried to work with people who are tired and confused, you will know that it doesn't take long before you feel a little tired and confused yourself. Some days you feel like you make progress, and other days you feel like you didn't do anything except fix their paper for them.

Anyway, I was a little discouraged as I went to tutoring that day. As I was walking in, I seriously asked myself if I was just wasting my time. (It's not like the amount that student tutors get paid is that great that I couldn't earn more somewhere else).

I had read Psalm 116 earlier that morning which starts out with “I love the Lord, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.” Now I hadn't specifically asked God for anything like this, but He obviously knew what was going on in my head because He arranged for me to have a most unexpected-but-amazing conversation.

She was an older black lady and I've tutored her several times. Actually, she's one of the more rewarding students to tutor. I don't know how to explain it, but some students are easy to connect with and help than others. (It doesn't sound nice, but some are an absolute brick wall . . . not that they're dumb, they just don't give you any feedback and you have now way of knowing whether or not they actually understand anything you're saying.) Anyway, she and I have always gotten along well and as soon as she walked into the center and saw me, she came right over and said “Oh good, I was hoping to see you today.”

She sat down and I started looking over her paper as she started talking like she usually does. She seemed a little flustered and disorganized, and pretty soon she told me that she's a little disorganized right now because she just had a death in the family. I had finished her paper but she seemed like she wanted to talk about it, so I started asking her about it.

She told me how her brother-in-law had died unexpectedly of a heart attack last week, told me about the funeral the day before, and then started talking about life and death in general. I know, a nice encouraging topic, right?! She started dropping things like “I don't know what you know about death” and “I don't know what you believe about God or a higher power” and other things that seemed like subtle hints. I thought to myself “I think she's trying to witness to me.” Being in a blunt mood, I asked her if she was a Christian, and she said she was. I told her that I was too, and what happened next was amazing. It was as if both of us knew immediately who the other person was and what they were going through. Over the next five or ten minutes, we had a conversation that would normally be impossible for an older black lady and a young white guy. Not that we were exactly the same – I could tell right away our cultures were totally different and probably both of us would feel like two left feet in each other's churches – but that didn't matter. We were a brother and sister in Christ, and both of us knew it.

I can't explain the conversation exactly,(some of the other people in the center probably thought we were religious nutcakes if they were listening in =) but suffice it to say that it was really encouraging for both of us. She needed someone who could tell her to slow down and take one thing at a time and who understood the hope that was in her even during a hard time. I needed someone to remind me that God sometimes uses people without them knowing it. Apparently God had used me to encourage her the last couple time I had helped her with her papers, and now she said she had prayed that she would run into me again so she could tell me that she thinks I'm headed down the right path and should continue on to be a teacher because I don't know how many kids I may be able to help. It's not always a good thing to hear something like that because for me it usually leads to pride, but in this case it didn't and it was something I needed to hear.

In the end, both of us realized that we had needed to talk to another Christian, and both of us marveled at how God had arranged it for us. You may not think He knows or cares about what you're thinking to yourself, but I guarantee that He does and that He'll surprise you sometime in the way that He shows it.