An assistant principal from a tough CA school walked directly toward me and asked, "What do you do with outlaw children?"
Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, "Come back tomorrow and I'll tell you."
Really?
Because I believe God hears and God can answer, I sat distracted at dinner, asking in my mind, "God, what do you do with outlaw children?"
Melt their hearts.
I gave the assistant principal that very answer the next day. I don't know if it changed the course of his work but it changed everything about mine:
We teachers once were children,
Only dreaming what we'd be;
Tending wounded sparrows,
Teaching dolls their ABC's.
Those dreams became a classroom
With wounded sparrows still;
Our orders now to teach these kids,
Some with broken wills.
Our lesson from the sparrow
In whose healing we took part?
To learn is flight preceded
By the melting of their hearts.*
God viewed freely as God chases us by melting our hearts with His compassion, His forgiveness, His constant motion of healing our broken, dusty selves.
Melted hearts turn to truth and productivity because they want to follow their Leader, the One Who trumps their case to the world (the psalmist to God in Psalm 139):
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.God's tender making of me--if I ponder it, believe it, wrestle with it--leads me right back to Him, desiring deeply what He has for me.
*Debi White, "The Melting of Their Hearts."
