as most of you know, i try to regularly visit the high school to hang out with students, meet new ones and just generally be seen. as of late i've been really struggling with going...partly because of time doing other, more "important" things like, writing a sermon for "big church"... or, planning a retreat...or, keeping track of finances for camp...or, having endless meetings about stuff i don't need to be involved in but because i haven't quite learned how to say 'no' yet always find myself in the middle of...(try reading that sentence with one breath).
anyway, today, just like every other Wednesday the past few weeks, there was this battle going on inside my head between what i know to be important and what i've let myself be fooled into thinking is important. Namely, going to the cafeteria and risk the rejection of high schoolers having a bad day. (just as a side note...i still haven't figured out why being thirty in the cafeteria is not much different than being sixteen in the cafeteria, still feel inferior, still feel awkward, still feel like everybody is looking at your zits, still checking your fly 100 times just to make sure, etc)
rewind to two days earlier. A high school dude I know was driving around town with a girl who was new at school and decided to stop by the office and introduce her...she came in, we shook hands, i asked her her name, she told me, and that was it...
fast forward to today. I'm sitting in my car outside the cafeteria, praying to God that when I walk in that place, students would see, feel, and experience Jesus in their midst. That through a smile or handshake or remembrance of a name, the Holy Spirit would spring up in them a recognition of something new and different and more intriguing than anything they've ever experienced before, and the God would use that to reveal Himself to them...
so, careful to perform the usual zit check in the rearview mirror, i walk in the cafeteria of about 500 students...in the next 90 minutes, i will be facing over 2000 students...i am certainly careful to check my zipper one last time...
this is how God works, in the midst of 2000 students, i see her, its the new girl, the one who i just met two days earlier for 30 seconds...she walked right by me...as she passed something inside me reached out and stretched out my arm and tapped her on the shoulder...she turned...I smiled...she smiled back...I said, "hi, it's good to see you"...
What she said I will never forget...no student in my 4 years of going to the high school has ever said what she said, but somehow, it's what every single one of them is screaming on the inside...
She said, "You noticed me."
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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