Unexpected…
Yesterday I received an early morning phone call from a teacher. Not because one of our children misbehaved, they are all adults now. No, the teacher asked me to be her substitute. Being a retired teacher, it was within my ability to say yes. Remembering what it was like to not feel well as a regular teacher, my answer was, “Yes.”
It was unexpected. My plan prior to the call was to stay at home and work a writing project. But my morning routine, and the whole day was upset…just the routine, not me. It was unexpected. Unexpected has been on my mind since.
Arriving at school, a non-conventional program where students spend part of their class time outside each day, my mind determined to use the term “unexpected” for the day. There is a morning class and an afternoon class to teach. When students came for the afternoon it was clear that defining unexpected would help the afternoon class understand. It will help you as well.
Unexpected means something surprising.
Something unexpected may be astonishing. Unexpected is unforeseen. One of the afternoon kids said it means “shocking.” It can be.
With unexpected defined and understood my next goal was to invite them to look for the unexpected-outside. Using their senses, they looked for unexpected things to see, to hear, to touch, to smell, and even to taste. We saw chickadees, but we did not expect the blue gray clouds in the sky. We heard the wind, and when we lay on our back on wetland ice, we heard the silence. That was beyond good. We touched the soft tan fuzz of last year’s cattail heads, and smelled the prairie. My response to how prairie smelled was “cold.” Olivia looked at me with a puzzled smile. “Cold is not a smell,” she said. My answer was unexpected. Then when we tasted native prairie grass, we thought it tasted, “dry.” Our greatest “unexpected” was a clump of gray fur stuck on the wetland ice.
It was clear to me this group of children found searching for the unexpected to be a pleasure.
As we were walking to the bus, I asked Evelynn, “What did you like about today?”
Her answer, “Everything,” confirmed my suspicions.
Then it dawned on me that there have been many unexpected this week. The bark of Burr Oak trees in the woods near our house. The rough broken surfaces of Burr oaks always fascinate and astonish. Bark is beautiful. This morning my mind was on that writing project again. Outside to fill the bird waterer caused me to notice the snow crystals falling gently from the sky. One landed on my sleeve. Then the thought came, “take out the camera.” In a few moments some of the beautiful crystals were photographs. Photos of snow crystals were unexpected. The beauty of the crystals even more unexpected.
While preparing to write this little article a final “unexpected” came to mind. It is the best of all “unexpecteds.” God made the Burr Oak Bark, the snow crystals, the fur on the ice, the cold of the prairie, and the children who found joy and delight searching for the unexpected.
God is the Author of the UNEXPECTED. God is able to do more than we can ask or imagine-more than we can expect…God made the earth and all its beauty-unexpected. And while we deserve death, God gives us life forever-astonishing, and unexpected…for while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us-unexpected.