Chalk it up to overdosing on VBS stuff over the past ten days, but I woke up this morning with a line from the "Hip-Hip-Hooray Hippopotamus" song running through my head, like a record with a deep scratch. Over and over and over. I could even see little hands moving and creating handprints all over the walls of my mind.
It's annoying to have a children's song scratching across your psyche like nails on a chalkboard, but if it had to happen, at least it was a true line: His fingerprints ARE everywhere.
I watched two storms roll through the midstate today. Both times, sunny skies darkened, the wind blew, the rain lashed against my windows, and then it receded just as quickly as it came, leaving everything clean and sparkly and sunny once again. We are no match for nature's fury, but we can take comfort that we are nestled in the shelter of our creator's arms.
It made me think of a recent lesson on the providence of God. Although I am a bit of word geek, that lesson struck me because I had never really thought about the root and obvious meaning of the word providence: to provide. He provides us with a habitable planet to sojourn on, air to breath, light to grow plants which feed us and the animals, which in turn feed us. Our bodies and brains are beyond comprehension in their complexity and perfectly elegant functionality to do everything we require. He sends rain on the just and the unjust, and he makes the sun to shine on us all, too.
The children's education program this summer is going to be an amazing (and wild) adventure. Thirteen weeks, six classroom rotations, and four lessons for grades K-5. All pointing out how we can know God's plans and promises for us, which He made at the beginning and He will keep to the very end.
Indeed, His fingerprints are everywhere, just to show how much He cares. That's a lot to hip-hip-hooray about, isn't it?
