Mr. Experience

I had a lot of great teachers when I was growing up: Mrs. Purdon in first grade who made sure I felt loved and safe, Ms. Archinal who had enough confidence in me in 6th grade to let me read part of the The Hobbit to the rest of the class when she had to be gone, Mrs. Zunigha in high school who was the toughest, meanest and best algebra teacher this side of the Mississippi. Good teachers not only teach you new things, but help you understand stuff you already knew but hadn't quite plugged in to your everyday existence.

I know it's old, but one of my best teachers has been Mr. Experience. In things both spiritual and relatively earthly, some things we only learn by living through them. I was recently and pleasantly surprised to find out that Charles Spurgeon felt the same way I do:

"There are many passages of Scripture which you will never understand until some trying experience shall interpret them to you. The other evening I was riding home after a heavy day's work; I was wearied and depressed; and swiftly and suddenly as a lightning flash, this text laid hold on me: 'My grace is sufficient for you!' When I got home, I looked it up in the original, and finally it dawned upon me what the text was saying, MY grace is sufficient for THEE. 'Why,' I said to myself, 'I should think it is!' and I burst out laughing. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish, being very thirsty, was troubled about drinking the river dry; and Father River said; 'Drink away, little fish, my stream is sufficient for you!' Or as if a little mouse in the granaries of Egypt, after seven years of plenty, feared lest it should die of famine, and Joseph said, 'Cheer up, little mouse, my granaries are sufficient for you!' Again I imagined a man way up on the mountain saying to himself, 'I fear I shall exhaust all the oxygen in the atmosphere.' But the earth cries, 'Breathe away, O man, and fill your lungs; my atmosphere is sufficient for you!'"

The longer I live, the more I am convinced of the sufficiency of God's grace. I need Him more than ever, and in 5 or 10 years, I'll see that I need Him even more. But Mr. Experience has taught me that my great God and Savior will always be there with armfuls of grace.