One of the Level 3 boys took a Bible to the white board in the room and after paging through it for some time, carefully read Ezekiel 34:7 (“Therefore, you shepherds hear the words of the Lord”) and wrote it on the board. After reading it to himself a few more times, he then looked through the Psalms, reading some, passing by some. Soon I saw that he was writing Psalm 137:1 (“By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down there we wept when we remembered Zion”) underneath his transcription of Ezekiel. He read the two together, standing back and gazing at them for some time. Then, he drew a line to connect the two verses, and wrote to the side of them, “these two related”.
He asked me, “How are these related? I know they are; I feel it. They said these in church, but I think there’s more.” I suggested that he look at Ezekiel chapter one. He did, and then he grew greatly excited to see that Ezekiel was hearing and speaking his prophecy at the same time that the people of Zion were weeping by the sides of the rivers in Babylon; Ezekiel had even had his first vision of God by the banks of one of those rivers. “I knew it; I knew it!” he said. “I knew that they were connected!”
Later I looked up and saw that he had written Psalm 23:1 (“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want”) as well, and he had drawn a line connecting it to the Ezekiel. “Miss Kay,” he said, "I know these are connected too”. I asked, if this was because they both talked about a shepherd. “Not just because they both talk of a shepherd. This one”, (he pointed to Ezekiel) “means that God takes care of us. I think this means that too (pointing to the Psalm 23), but there’s more, isn’t there. They sound the same, but they mean something different too.”
I sat with him a moment, then wondered with him about the use of the word “shepherd”. Did he know that in the time when Ezekiel was writing, the Hebrew word for shepherd could also be translated as “King”?” Here he became very excited. “That’s it! These shepherds were the kings! (Ezekiel). They weren’t taking care of the sheep, the people. That’s why they needed to hear God’s words! But here (the Psalm), the Lord is our King and he IS taking care of everything we need. That’s it!”
He then began to write in his work journal for the day: “Throughout the scriptures there should be more special fraises (sic). Like: The Lord is my shepherd I do not want. So I think there needs to be just a few more special verses. This work relates to when we get in a circle and read and discuss our parable. Did the people who wrote the bible long ago, did God tell them what to write or did they make some of it up? Plus why do the Psalms relate to almost all the scriptures? In the book of Psalms there is a lot of stuff to learn, so I think we should start reading Psalms in class.”
Later, as the students were coming to the door to be dismissed to their next class, I saw him arranging a prayer with the magnetic prayer words above his writing on the white board. After they left, I went to read his prayer. It read, “My Good Angel Teacher” . Indeed! His exegesis was clearly lead by a heavenly visitor, and his short prayer of thanksgiving was there for us all to see.
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