The Bible in Your Everyday, Crazy Life

In a grand show of irony, it was the teachers at my school who took the first test this year.

A hard one.

Thursday was the first day of school. On Friday the computer server went down.

But let me take you back to the week before our computer trauma. Teachers gathered, and the superintendent brought us an encouraging word from the Lord.

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you…” (Matthew 7:12 NIV)

“What you would have them do to you if you were in their shoes,” he said. It was a reminder to treat our colleagues well, and of course we were listening. We’re a Christian school. We sing hymns together. Of course we’ll do to others as we would have them do to us.

But then the server gave up the ghost.

I heard the superintendent and Tech Man speaking solemn words in the hallway on Friday, words like “server” and “How much?” Brows furrowed, like doctors who have bad news to deliver to the family.

So I prayed for Tech Man all weekend, because I knew the heat was on him to get us back up and running. (Do you know how crippled teachers are nowadays, without technology working?)

On Monday, I saw him in the halls. “How ya doing?” I asked.

And do you know what he told me? He said he wasn’t doing too bad. All the teachers had been so gracious and patient that he actually felt really encouraged. I thought of the “do to others” speech, and I felt like we–the whole lot of us–tested fine on that one. Made me smile.

Here’s the moral to the story: If you read the Bible or hear the Bible, you’re going to get an opportunity to do the Bible. The words aren’t meant to stay on the page. They’re supposed to jump to life and give us what we need to function well, in real-life, server-down situations.

What Bible truth have you had opportunity to put into practice recently?