One day last spring, I taught the boys while wearing a Darth Vader mask.  Really.  I even did the voice.

The reactions from each of the boys were priceless.  My “cool” thirteen-year-old got a case of the giggles.  My ten-year-old’s already big blue eyes got even bigger.  My seven-year-old looked at me as if I had lost my mind, and the five year old smiled a big goofy smile.  They all paid a bit more attention, though–at least for a few minutes.

Let’s face it, school is not always fun.  Especially not towards the end of the year.

We needed a little tension break after a hard day of work.  It helped us all refocus and continue.

I probably should do that kind of thing more often.

After all,  God does that kind of thing with me as well.

His shake-up moves go from the ridiculous to the sublime and everything in between.

Right now, though, the lesson is a dagger, and I am left staggering under the blow.

I will get through it, and He will be there, but it is still painful, and I wish it weren’t happening.

But…God knows best, and if I am going to let Him be God of my life in one area, I have to let Him be God in every area.  No holds barred.  For real.  For keeps.

I had always heard the story of the shepherd breaking the leg of the wayward lamb and then carrying it until the leg healed.  As the story goes, by the time the leg heals, the sheep has learned obedience and to follow the shepherd.  I am not sure there is any truth to this story – a cursory look of information on the web would say it is not.

Regardless, it is true for me.  Sometimes I need the holy two-by-four upside the head to get me back on the right path, headed in the right direction, back to the side of the Shepherd.  And I thank God for the two-by-four to shake me out of my comfort zone.

In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. – 1 Peter 1:6-7