God's Goodness When I Least Expected It

The grace of God amazes me.  Today's example begins with the fact that our entire family was up late last night hosting an event for our church.  Usually the boys are in bed by 7:30 pm and asleep by 8 pm. Last night we started bedtime at 9:15 pm.  And no, they did not sleep in.  I first heard Luke at 5:45 am, as he opened his squeaky dresser drawer while getting dressed.  Yep.   I felt sure it was going to be a LONG morning.

After breakfast we started school.  I simplified things quite a bit considering the boys' current state of sleep deprivation.  For his BSF lesson, we read the questions first and then I read Luke the passage and stopped each time there was an answer.  I figured that was a good reading skill to teach anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised at Luke's willingness and ability to do his handwriting lesson today.  I thought for sure we would ditch it, but I gave him the option and he was game.  First moment of grace.  Science is always popular and today was no exception.  History is also a winner, but today had a new activity that I wasn't completely confident would fly.  We have been studying about how agriculture began in the Fertile Crescent and spawned the birth of cities such as Jericho and Çatal Hüyük.  Today I had planned to introduce our first mapping activity, but now I wasn't so sure.  I shot a quick prayer up and decided to give it a whirl with the understanding that I could easily suspend it if things got ugly.


Low and behold, Luke loves the maps!  He followed my instructions perfectly, circling the two cities in red, tracing the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers and coloring the area between them green.  I was able to introduce the name of the region between the rivers as Mesopotamia.  He was elated with the size of that name.  :-)  


When I was done giving these instructions, he asked, "What else can I color on here?"  So we started coloring the other bodies of water, talking about their names and locations on our world map.


It is moments like these that remind me that God is bigger than I think and more full of grace than I can imagine.  Even on days that should go badly, the Holy Spirit steps in and provides us with the love and patience we need to not just survive, but thrive.  I am thankful.  Here are the pics.

 This picture makes me so happy that God asked us to homeschool our boys.  I got to see this face!  I got to share this moment with my boy.  It was special and I'm thankful to Jesus for it.

Luke's first map!