what we dream of

I taught the future tense to my kids this last week or so, and so I had them write just 10 sentences about what they wanted to do/be in the future. They all wanted to graduate high school, go the college, have a career, hopefully get married, and have 2-6 children. Boil it down, and we all want to work, relate, and reproduce. That is apparently what God made us for. It seems so simple, these sweet dreams that my students have, but when faced with real life, the trails of college, relationship, finances, temptation, and betrayal, how many of these dreams will become reality? I know that my high school dreams still haven't all come true, despite all of my hard work. I'm still missing that last piece. I can only pray that God will protect my hopeful students and grant them these blessings in his own time. I can only pray the same for myself as well.

The more that I look at life and the psychology of development, the more I realize how frail we are. We balance on the point of a knife daily. Each day is capable of changing the events of history forever. It seems that we could be too powerful for our own good, and yet we rarely realize it or act on it. And great evil seems so much easier to accomplish than great good. But it is not usually the huge events that move us forward, but the daily work and steady discipline that we come to know and love under the direction of the Almighty. It is the simple small things that bring us pleasure and fulfillment, and the continuous hope of a better future. It is the past the inspires or embitters us, the now that we struggle against, and the future that beckons for better or for ill. It is never our choice to live, but since we have been given life we prove what sort of fibre we are made of by how we stand up to the unasked for challenges.