We have now been blessed with three scheduled chalk talks. The first, March 28, is at the Beachburg Hall. The second, March 29, is also in Beachburg, at the Country Haven Retirement Home. The third, more locally situated, is at Mont Saint Dominique, a Catholic nursing home in Sherbrooke on May 22. We would appreciate your prayers for every one of them.
Every chalk talk takes a certain amount of preparation. First (and not necessarily easiest), we must find a day that fits with the already made schedule. This time, we started by setting up on Friday. On Monday, we did a practice run using a background that we had previously made, but not used.
Tuesday, the real work started. We started by preparing our paper for the new backgrounds. We have found that sanding the bogus paper helps it absorb more chalk.
Clouds are something we have a hard time with, so we were pleasantly surprised when, after much time spent in discussion as to how we could improve, our backgrounds turned out as well as they did. There is certainly still much room for improvement.
Tuesday evening, we started work on the three blacklight drawings. We work from a slide Matthew Bowman made from Captain of my Ship. (Our version of Captain of my Ship is an adaptation and expansion of that chalk talk.)
It is exciting to see the way the Lord works through every situation of life when we let Him. While I was working the lights during the last background of the blacklight session, something broke inside our control box. The dimmer that is supposed to control the main white lights ceased to function. That is not good. We decided to put white bulbs in the red sockets and finish the blacklight preparation that way.
Wednesday was the day we had planned for cleanup. But, before we did the cleanup, we had to check into the problem with the dimmer. I soon had the faulty dimmer out, and since we are home-schooled, and since the dimmer wasn’t working anyway, we decided to take it apart. We soon found the problem – the small plastic piece that switches the dimmer on or off had broken right off and had left the dimmer stuck in the “off” position. So, we switched it on manually, and voilà, the dimmer was once again working as it ought to – well, almost. The only “problem” was that it no longer clicks off – it only dims off. (While we had the box open, we also replaced all the solid-core wiring with fibred wiring.)
The Lord’s blessing is present in our lives at all times at all times, but there are times that we have more difficulty in seeing it than others. In this case, God’s blessing was evidenced in the timing of this event. This could have happened in a very different way. It could have happened right before one of the presentations. But God was gracious to us, and not only gave us the ability to fix it, but also arranged the timing such that we could do something about it.
This also reminds me of how we are sometimes – broken. Very often, we do something that we shouldn’t have done, and there are consequences. But God can fix anything. Our lives may not be as they would have been had we not fallen, but He can nevertheless work all things together for our good, and that is exactly what He wants for us.
We finally did get the cleanup done, and we are now ready (I believe) to pack everything into the trailer.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:”
Romans 8:27-28 “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”