Teachers and Gentle Songs

"Let my teaching fall on you like rain;
let my speech settle like dew.
Let my words fall like rain on tender grass,
like gentle showers on young plants."
Deuteronomy 32:2

We are back in the city today, glad for a very successful cottage opening with incredible weather and very minimal plumbing prayers needed. Our crew was energetic, and together we got way more done than Ken and I ever could have by ourselves in an overnight trip.

I'm not even sad to be back a day early. This way we miss the traffic and still have a day to look after normal domestics and just take a break from this whole house-for-sale thing. We asked for no showings today, and it seems like everyone needs a long holiday weekend anyways.

I did want to share this capture though, from yesterday morning. It's of a very small wild strawberry plant just to the side of the cottage under the clothesline.

I hope you can see the drops of dew on both the petals and on the lower leaves. Gotta love it when my subpar phone camera can deliver something like this. Totally by accident. I did nothing special.

So clean. So simple. So gentle.

Moses wanted his instruction through song to be like this. That's what Deuteronomy chapter 32 is; a song meant to instruct. Very ancient near eastern, this, learning through song. Something we all respond to, I think.

And two things come to mind for me here.

One is that the song itself is all about God's faithfulness to His people, even in the face of their outright rebellion. Ironically, some of the words in the song sound anything but gentle. Until you read it all the way through and see how God brings it around to protecting His ultimate plans and purposes for them/us, in spite of.

The second thought on this though is simply how Moses describes his hopes for how his teaching, his words, will fall on the ears of his hearers.

I was good for my Gramma's heart over the weekend to watch Ken teach two of our now teenage grandkids how to hook up the cottage plumbing. As you may have picked up from previous posts and my mention of 'plumbing prayers' above, this is not always a smooth opening task. It can be quite tedious, even when everything does actually work the way you want it to.

Yet, Ken was so good with them, naming each component, explaining the physics of it, and giving them the tools in hand so they could actually torque things and bang things and make it happen themselves. He stayed calm and encouraging throughout the whole process. And when it all came together and we had water in all the taps, he gave them all the credit.

No songs were sung during the plumbing hook up experience, except in my heart maybe. Still, I think Moses inspired it.

Personally, I am glad for the teachers in my life who have been like this for me, especially when I was a 'young plant.'
And personally, right now, as someone who does a fair bit of teaching (and writing) myself, I so want to be this.

Back to the cottage and berries and such.
The blueberry bushes are loaded with potential right now.
We'll see how the season goes.
And, who knows? Maybe we'll get a share of some strawberries too.

Happy Holiday Monday everyone!