4th Wednesday in Advent

Impossible?
 
“For with God nothing will be impossible.”
Luke 1:37, RSV

 
“I don’t know how you do it,” a teaching colleague said to me recently. She meant she didn’t know how I work with students who have learning disabilities, students who act out almost daily, students who don’t want to learn. Students like J-Boy.
 
What my colleague doesn’t know is that I really don’t have what it takes to put up with J-boy. He never comes to class prepared to learn—no books, no paper, no pencil. He salts his speech judiciously with the F-word and literally leaps into my classroom from the hallway, shouting and flailing his arms like a wild person. Sometimes that boy wears me out.
 
J-Boy’s mother died recently, and I decided on the spur of the moment to ask my principal for permission to attend the funeral in the middle of the school day. The principal surprised me by not only granting permission, but also going herself, along with the counselor and another teacher.
 
J-Boy sat with his dad in the front row of the church, looking utterly desolate. All through the funeral, J-Boy’s dad rubbed his son’s shoulders and tousled his hair.
 
When the lengthy service was finally over, friends and relatives greeted J-Boy and his dad. J-Boy seemed surprised to see me, but accepted a hug from me. Maybe that hug will be a defining moment for both of us, helping us to see and appreciate each other in new ways.
 
If my colleague is reading this, she needs to know the truth about me: I couldn’t have hugged J-Boy without divine assistance. I couldn’t put up with J-Boy’s antics in my classroom without divine assistance. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with J-Boy every day without divine assistance.
 
I’m not perfect. In some ways, I am as deeply flawed as some of my students. Yet the Holy One does not reject me because of my flaws, but invites me to learn, through my daily interactions with students who try my patience, that with God nothing is impossible.