Friday, January 22, 2010

With what shall we come before the Lord?....with rivers of pennies


The library smelled of hot chocolate, marshmellows, and homemade brownines....crystal snowflakes hung from the ceiling and the monitors flashed a deep blue with snowfalling and a snowman doffing his hat in its center. Some children sat at the tables decorated with frosty blue and silver arrangements enjoying their treats, while the other half sat at the computers designing virtual snowflakes with visions of snowdays, snowballs, and snowmen with carrot noses dancing in their heads.

Names were called as the children lined up to choose their prizes from the old steamer trunk. Three moms helped serve, clean, and work with the students as they reaped the rewards of reading independently and reaching their reading goals! On days like this, I don't wonder why I am a librarian in an elementary library carved out of two old classrooms filled with disintegrating books in need of replacement.

The day began with over 60 children lining up bearing coins from their piggy banks to put in the big jar marked "Help Haiti." A first grader, Sophie, had to have help as she proffered the heavy small bucket filled with her pennies, nichols, and dimes. These children were bringing their 'widow's mites,' their personal fortunes because they shared the grand human characteristic of caring for others.

As I walked out of the building this afternoon, Jasmine, a beautiful chocolate colored little girl with flashing brown eyes, rushed up and threw her arms around me, "Did you see me at the party?" she asked. "Yes," I said. "I was so proud of you."
"I got three points!" she announced. "I'm gonna get 5 points next time." Then she danced away toward the drinking fountain.

The answer to my post last week about Micah 6:6, which grew from a growing dispair about our failure to think and respond, as a country, with depth to reality suddenly became a 'thing with feathers' as Emily Dickinson said.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

And so ....my children brought me hope and answered the question, "with what shall I come before the Lord?" The prophet asks, "shall I come with burnt offerings.....Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands rivers of oil?"

"No," said my children as they came.......with rivers of pennies, and offerings of purity of spirit. So how shall we respond? Micah answers that too, We must do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with our God.

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