"O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee"
By Ed Piper
In my quiet time this morning (July 19), a line from Washington Gladden's 1879 hymn, "O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee", stood out to me.
The third stanza begins, "Teach me Thy patience, still with Thee." It goes on to give three places or activities in which the first-person narrator is asking God to teach her or him patience: in "closer...company" with the Lord, in work, and in a trusting attitude.
It is the second that popped out: "In work that keeps faith sweet and strong".
I intentionally chose to go into teaching difficult students in juvenile court school. Rather, I asked God to place me there.
I wanted to be on the edge. At the frontier. Work with students who no one else wanted to work with.
Not thinking too highly of my teaching skills, which were still developing, I didn't want to teach in regular school. The teachers in those schools are great. I just wanted something non-traditional, challenging, where I--hopefully God working through me--could reach kids who no one else had reached.
In other parts of my life, I have also chosen difficult or non-traditional paths: Not speaking Spanish, I accepted a job teaching in Mexico City. Granted, all my teaching in English/Language Arts would be in English, but the other 18 hours of the day would be spent living in a Spanish-speaking country.
Do you get a flavor of what I'm saying? I have been willing to take risks.
On the other hand, Gladden's words in his well-known hymn speak of being involved in "work that keeps faith sweet and strong". Sometimes, in my classroom in juvenile court school, my work did anything but--it tried to wreck my faith.
I'm thinking of days when I was tired, which weren't infrequent, physically and emotionally, and two students fell out of the classroom restroom across the hall vomiting and stumbling to the floor, totally bombed out on rochas (muscle relaxers taken to the nth degree).
Or our 14-year-old girl who showed up one day having already swigged half the bottle of Presidente brandy she was carrying in her hand at 7:30 in the morning. Imagine, a full-fledged alcoholic at that age.
Well, you say, weren't you seeing God work in these situations, showing how he wanted to rescue these young girls or at least work in their lives?
Heck, no, I wasn't seeing God working at those moments. I was too busy going, Oh, my gosh, what do we have here? You're carrying on your lesson plan--sure, knowing full well in juvenile court school that anything can happen at any time--but suddenly the whole day is disrupted by substances, or stumbling students, or both.
Much less someone knocking on the (locking) front door, wanting to bust in and create a disturbance, whether due to gang, or personal problem, or something else.
"In work that keeps faith sweet and strong." I have to ponder that one a while. Work on that one for a while.
I want to be working in tandem with God, doing my part while he leads me. And yes, I reaffirm, I chose to go into teaching in those difficult rooms.
But I didn't always get it in an instant. Sometimes I had to remove myself to reflect and look back, with the situation already having gone down, to let God renew my thinking and help me to see just exactly what he was up to.
God is great. He is all-powerful. God is love. He is perfect love. The lack isn't on his side. It's in my spiritual maturity, in my willingness to have God come in and invade my thinking and to use me, whether in the situation or after the fact (because there will be follow-up to each situation in which I can act as God's person, as Jesus's person in that classroom).
I want to be taking part in work that does build a sweet and strong faith. But sometimes, in the difficult career I chose, that also required doing retreat, silence, prayer, and worship apart from the time I was actually dealing with students in the classroom--to rest and renew, to see just how God is and was working. Because he didn't stop working, just because one of my students flew off the handle.
Other work I have found keeping of "faith sweet and strong": tutoring one-on-one, and other potentially quieter situations. Sometimes, many times over my 20 years with juvenile court students I could see where God was working.
But I don't think of the work I did as "work that keeps faith sweet and strong" in Gladden's poetic words. His words make me think of a job that is easier. Less chaotic. A little more predictable. Doing some wonderful, soft ministry with people who are not troubled like the students I had. Maybe others associate the lyrics with something different, but that's how the words to the hymn strike me.
In my quiet time this morning (July 19), a line from Washington Gladden's 1879 hymn, "O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee", stood out to me.
The third stanza begins, "Teach me Thy patience, still with Thee." It goes on to give three places or activities in which the first-person narrator is asking God to teach her or him patience: in "closer...company" with the Lord, in work, and in a trusting attitude.
It is the second that popped out: "In work that keeps faith sweet and strong".
I intentionally chose to go into teaching difficult students in juvenile court school. Rather, I asked God to place me there.
I wanted to be on the edge. At the frontier. Work with students who no one else wanted to work with.
Not thinking too highly of my teaching skills, which were still developing, I didn't want to teach in regular school. The teachers in those schools are great. I just wanted something non-traditional, challenging, where I--hopefully God working through me--could reach kids who no one else had reached.
In other parts of my life, I have also chosen difficult or non-traditional paths: Not speaking Spanish, I accepted a job teaching in Mexico City. Granted, all my teaching in English/Language Arts would be in English, but the other 18 hours of the day would be spent living in a Spanish-speaking country.
Do you get a flavor of what I'm saying? I have been willing to take risks.
On the other hand, Gladden's words in his well-known hymn speak of being involved in "work that keeps faith sweet and strong". Sometimes, in my classroom in juvenile court school, my work did anything but--it tried to wreck my faith.
I'm thinking of days when I was tired, which weren't infrequent, physically and emotionally, and two students fell out of the classroom restroom across the hall vomiting and stumbling to the floor, totally bombed out on rochas (muscle relaxers taken to the nth degree).
Or our 14-year-old girl who showed up one day having already swigged half the bottle of Presidente brandy she was carrying in her hand at 7:30 in the morning. Imagine, a full-fledged alcoholic at that age.
Well, you say, weren't you seeing God work in these situations, showing how he wanted to rescue these young girls or at least work in their lives?
Heck, no, I wasn't seeing God working at those moments. I was too busy going, Oh, my gosh, what do we have here? You're carrying on your lesson plan--sure, knowing full well in juvenile court school that anything can happen at any time--but suddenly the whole day is disrupted by substances, or stumbling students, or both.
Much less someone knocking on the (locking) front door, wanting to bust in and create a disturbance, whether due to gang, or personal problem, or something else.
"In work that keeps faith sweet and strong." I have to ponder that one a while. Work on that one for a while.
I want to be working in tandem with God, doing my part while he leads me. And yes, I reaffirm, I chose to go into teaching in those difficult rooms.
But I didn't always get it in an instant. Sometimes I had to remove myself to reflect and look back, with the situation already having gone down, to let God renew my thinking and help me to see just exactly what he was up to.
God is great. He is all-powerful. God is love. He is perfect love. The lack isn't on his side. It's in my spiritual maturity, in my willingness to have God come in and invade my thinking and to use me, whether in the situation or after the fact (because there will be follow-up to each situation in which I can act as God's person, as Jesus's person in that classroom).
I want to be taking part in work that does build a sweet and strong faith. But sometimes, in the difficult career I chose, that also required doing retreat, silence, prayer, and worship apart from the time I was actually dealing with students in the classroom--to rest and renew, to see just how God is and was working. Because he didn't stop working, just because one of my students flew off the handle.
Other work I have found keeping of "faith sweet and strong": tutoring one-on-one, and other potentially quieter situations. Sometimes, many times over my 20 years with juvenile court students I could see where God was working.
But I don't think of the work I did as "work that keeps faith sweet and strong" in Gladden's poetic words. His words make me think of a job that is easier. Less chaotic. A little more predictable. Doing some wonderful, soft ministry with people who are not troubled like the students I had. Maybe others associate the lyrics with something different, but that's how the words to the hymn strike me.
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