The big picture

I work in our church's preschool ministry, placing teachers & tallying roll. We recently expanded our area, and now have two information desks at two different wings (North and West). In the old area, I used to place all the teachers, making decisions like "the 4-year-olds will have to get by with only one teacher and a youth helper because I need a set of hands to hold crying 1-year-olds." These decisions were easy to make--I could hear the one-year-olds crying, and since I was responsible for the entire area, I had to choose where to place the people I had.

Now I simply place teachers for the older group of preschools, ages 3-5, in the West Wing. Three weeks in a row, I have received calls from my director, asking for teachers for the younger classes. Yes, you heard me: she has been taking teachers away from me to work in the North Wing holding babies. MY teachers. The ones caring for MY preschoolers. How audacious. I am sure you are as equally affronted as I.

This past Sunday, the director was gone, and after I had placed teachers in the West Wing, I moved to North to check on their situation. Because I could see that they needed a teacher, I pulled one from the West Wing to make things work...and promptly laughed at myself. Sure, when I can see the Big Picture, I play like a team. Put me in my own wing, and I become introverted and selfish.

Long set up to say--don't you think God is the Big Picture guy? I'm down here moving my people around and making things work in my own corner, but for the sake of the Big Picture, he will sometimes take things (and people!) away from me. And he never vacations for a weekend and puts me in his place--I don't really get to see things from his perspective. I have to trust. I have to believe that there is a Big Picture, and that sometimes it is more important than my corner.