A Different Perspective

It was a snow day today, so for an hour or so today I had a collection of students I don't usually teach in my room.

I let them choose from an assortment of work packets, and went around the room and spent time sitting at one desk or another while they worked.

I sat with one kid who sometimes struggles in school. He had chosen a Hanukkah word search. Instead of the French vocabulary on the list, he was circling nonsense words - and making them make sense. 

He circled I L O V and crossed out the next four letters, writing in E YOU.

Then he spied D I N N in a line, with a curved connection to E and R.  He kept finding words that weren't intended to be there, words that were close to being there, words that were there, if you could just tilt your attention sideways at the right point. Thirty kids could look at that page and see the twenty words deliberately cached, but he could see something else.

Jesus was foretold in prophecy, but only Anna and Simeon were waiting for Him in the temple. The star shine over the whole world, but the wise men were the only ones we read of who followed it. 

Sometimes we can look at the same thing as everyone else and see something a little bit differently. I think that's what makes artists, writers, thinkers, worshipers: a different perspective. Looking at the same thing as other people and seeing something different is a gift.

Even if other people think we're crazy. Even if we end up doing something sideways, like worshiping a baby who was born 2 millenia ago. Like spending your time providing food for a hungry kid. Like stopping on your way to work and pushing someone's car out of a snow bank. Ten cars drive by without seeing, but when you see - 

When you see, you do something about it.

May God give us eyes to see, hearts to understand, and the courage to do something about it.

Merry Christmas, friends. 

Xo.

the moon, caught on a random metal piece of tower.