Getting Ahead

This morning, I was giving Drummer Boy his spelling test.

He had just finished telling me all the words on the list.

"See, Mom?" he said proudly. "I know them already. I'm not going to forget. They're up there in my noggin."

I gathered the study materials and began to read out the words to him.

"No, Mom, I wrote those already," he pronounced, firing off at light speed the words he had written down in the 25 seconds it had taken me to start the test.

As you can see, all the words were correct. But the format lacked any form at all.

I made him do it over, and this time, numbered and dated with his name.

(And he had to wait for me to give him the words.)

You know where this is going, right?

If I had just let him do it the way he wanted, it wouldn't have been acceptable as evidence of our homeschool method of testing--to any official from the Department of Education. It was just a bunch of words jumbled together.

God reminded me this morning that when I get ahead of Him, even if I know the plan, the words to say, the song to sing, the person needing help, if it's not according to His pattern, His format, it's not done right.

No one else will be able to look at what I'm doing and "get" what it's about. All the right words and actions will be there, but if it's not done in an orderly fashion, waiting on God for the next step, it will not last beyond me. It will die with me, because I'm the only one who understands it.

Then the LORD answered me and said:
“ Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry."

(Habakkuk 2:2-3)