“A fool has no delight in understanding, But in expressing his own heart.”

Proverbs 18:2 NKJV

So I am a Kindergarten teacher and I was watching the children playing in the sandbox this week. As I was watching, God directed my eyes to two boys. One wearing a sim hat and another wearing a bright yellow shirt. We’ll name them E and M.

As they were playing, bugs came onto M. Since he was wearing  a bright yellow shirt. M tried swatting them away, but they didn’t leave and M was too busy playing to pay attention to them. But E saw them. First he tried swatting at them with his hat. Then he tried to smack a bug that landed on M. Immediately, M got mad. Even when E tried to explain that it was a bug. I came over and told M that E was trying to get a bug. Though I did make E apologize for hitting M so hard. E did apologize but that wasn’t enough for M.

M yelled and stormed over to another end of the sandbox with the other boys. I tried to stop M, but he covered his ears and pouted, still mad. E did get sad and wanted to go after M, but I stopped him. I saw that there were more bugs where M went and wanted to tell M. So I told E. I also said I would play with him and teach him a better way to get bugs off of people if he stayed with me. E hesitated a bit, but did listen to me and accepted my offer.

A little while afterwards, E found other children to play with but M got bit by the bugs. He came to me crying a bit and needing help to apply cream to the red welting bites. I told him the cream might hurt, but I would try to make it better. I did as much as I could and he was very brave, standing as still as he could. When I was done, he wasn’t crying anymore and I could tell him the areas to avoid because there were a lot of bugs there. 

He listened and there wasn’t an incident afterwards.

So many times we want to help people, give them advice we know will help them, or maybe just get them to see our side. It would help them or save them later pain. But here’s the thing…sometimes people aren’t really interested or ready to listen. 

They don’t want to fix things or get better. All they want is to express their feelings and for someone to accept, validate, or just listen to them.  They don’t want to understand, they want to express. Just like M was focused on only showing how angry he was. People can get so preoccupied with how they are feeling and what they see, anything (especially Truth) goes in one ear and out the other.

And we can all get like that. 

So how do we help those people or ourselves in that state? Well, we pray and listen to our Divine Teacher, God. God is ready to teach you how to listen, to engage with you when others isolate you, and to comfort as He heals you when you’re ready to listen.

God is the best teacher there is and loves all of His students. Even the students that are too busy trying to deal with things their way and the students focused only on expressing themselves (their pain, their anger, their guilt). 

Though, He delights in students that come to Him, ready to listen and learn. Students who cry and get angry but still do as they are told. Students who trust Him enough to come running to Him at full blast and jump into His arms, whether happy or sad.

God loves all His students and that is not a question. The question is, what kind of student are you?

(I’m sorry for any mistakes. This was a quickly typed one.)