His Workmanship

I already told you I'm not very good at bulletin boards. For this one, I put up a scarf that I found in my cupboard and then on top of that, I posted the text of Ephesians 2:10. We are God's workmanship. Apparently the Greek word is poema. We are God's creations, God's unique handiwork, God's poems.

I was older than middle school, but still a teenager, when I first read that as God's unique poems, we should never try to be like anyone else. The whole point of a poem is that it is different from all other poems. When a student turns in a poem to me that I have read before and claims he wrote it, I don't give him an "A" because it's a beautiful poem. He has to write a new one. It has to be unique. That idea helped me as an adolescent, and I try every year to instill it into my students. They are so valuable to God (and to me) as they are. God made each one of them different, and each one beautiful. (Did you feel beautiful when you were 13? Neither did I.)

And this verse is for me, too. Teachers have insecurities as well. I'm not the cool 25-year-old teacher any more. (Actually, while I once was a teacher who was 25, I don't think I was ever all that cool.) Others can do many things better than I can (like make bulletin boards). And yet, I am God's workmanship. He has created good deeds in advance for me to do this school year. He has sent me the students I am supposed to have. All of us - the students and their teacher - are a bit battered and wounded after the events of the past seven months. But God has placed us here. An administrator used the metaphor of a soldier yesterday, placed tactically by a general. It's not an accident that we're all here together this year.