Years ago, at the start of my teaching career, I had a decision to make.
I grew up in a medium-sized city and adopted a "city" attitude wherein I somehow sized up small town life as lacking something, at least in opportunity.
You know God...He sometimes plops us right into the arena that we thought we'd never enter. So, by job-decision time, I was married and living in the very small town I had looked down upon when driving through to visit relatives as a child.
And--you guessed it--my first job offer was in the elementary school of that small town.
Looking back, the smartest decision I made was to ask God His opinion. Work in this small town or in the city I knew and loved?
What makes you think the children of this small town are less important to Me than those in your city? "Grading" people by where they live is a human endeavor. It certainly is not My way.
My second smartest decision? To enter into small-town life with joy and discovery. I'm on my fourth small town 37 years later and think it is one of the greatest environments in the world, no matter one's life stage.
The lesson? God's creations that we serve are the same no matter the place: they are worthy of being served because God made them. No grades, no better-thans, just worth our love and our best.
