Eavesdropping

This morning, I finished my 8am class and had a little less than an hour to read a chapter for a quiz in my education class. I went to the lobby of the building to read instead of the library like I usually do, mostly because I have a terrible cold and didn't feel like making the extra effort to walk over there. I began to read, and just could not concentrate, thanks to three girls having a conversation across the room. Normally, I'm pretty adept at tuning people out when I read. I can study just about anywhere without a problem, but this morning, it was impossible. Naturally, since I couldn't tune them out, I was listening to what they were saying. The first phrase I caught was "relationship with him", which had me a little annoyed that they chose MY reading spot to have a conversation about guys. Then I realized, they weren't talking about boys, they were talking about their relationships with God.

Most of the conversation was about school, and how they stress themselves out over trying to be perfect students (something I can relate to). They talked about how when they just stop trying to control that part of their lives and trust God to take care of it, He does. When they make time to spend with Him even though they "should be" writing a paper or studying for a class, the deadline for the paper gets pushed back and classes get canceled. Trust things to God and he will take care of them for you. They had a lot more to say about it, but that was the general idea, and they closed with a warm, heartfelt prayer.

When they finished, I got their attention and admitted that I had been eavesdropping. I told them that I was having a hard time tuning them out, but that their converstation had been exactly what I needed to hear. They were happy to hear it, made enthusiastic, friendly introductions, invited me to join them next week and told me they would be praying for me and my quiz. We said goodbye and I turned back to my work.

After all this, I had about twenty minutes to do the reading, which was basically enough time to read the chapter summary and hope for the best. At that point I had pretty much decided that doing poorly on this one quiz was a fair price to pay for the uplifting discussion I got to be a part of. I finished up the summary and went to class.

Quizzes in this class are 7 or 8 questions that we each sit and take individually: a couple true-false, some multiple choice, and a short answer or two. We've had lots of quizzes since the beginning of the semester, and they've all been basically the same. Today? Group quiz. We've never had a group quiz before, we probably won't again, but today we had one, just when I needed it most. Yet another example of how God knows what we need, and provides it for us.