The school quest

My granddaughter once asked me to pray that God would send her to "a school where they teach about Jesus." I almost replied that it was not possible (for a number of major reasons), but then I remembered that "with God all things are possible," so we prayed together on the spot.

The child is insatiable for Bible stories, and by now she knows almost as many as I do. (I am scraping down to the minor judges and kings). So I recently suggested to her that perhaps God has answered her prayer in an unexpected way by making me her Bible teacher. She replied, "That's not what I asked for."

I decided I needed to put feet to prayers and actually look into schools. If there is a mountain in the way, then the Bible has something to say about that too: We are to speak to our mountains. Jesus gives us authority to tell a mountain to be moved and cast into the sea (Mark 11:23-24). "Tuition mountain! Be cast into the sea!" (And so on with the other obstacles.)

So I made an appointment with a principal to check out a school last week. As I drove there, praying and listening to the radio, NPR had a lengthy interview of a professor at Sonoma State University named Don Romesburg. He was touting new curriculum ideas, feasible now that a new law in California allowing schools to teach gender history differently has dismantled his own "mountain" barring LGBT propagation.

When asked what kinds of books he looks forward to introducing with the way cleared by this progressive legislation, Romesburg said he would like to see interesting biographies of such people as Harvey Milk at the elementary school level. There should also be thoughtful studies of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first lesbian rights group in the country.

The radio program, coming just when it did as I was heading down to "a school where they teach about Jesus," felt like solid confirmation that I was exactly where I needed to be that day.