Jenny's gift, and my "pleasant stones"

O, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, Behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires, and I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. Isaiah 54:11-12

Last week as I was frantically setting up chairs for the Korean/English kids club I coach(?) teach(?), (frantically because I was in the middle of telling a story, but one little girl saw a spider on the floor and started off a squealing chain of excited little arachnophobes, forcing me to get them off the floor before finishing the story…) a little girl named Jenny brought me a little blue box with a bow - the kind you get when you buy jewellery from a schnazz store. She stood tippy-toe and whispered, “for you, teacher.”
Lucky for me, it is impolite in Korean culture to open a gift immediately. I put it in my bag and focused on getting the kids into chairs.
After the class, I opened the box. Inside, on a puff of cotton, was a horse-head bracelet charm; an orange bead; and two round cardboard circles with cartoons and Korean writing on them - I assume they were the equivalent of what we called “pogs” in the late ’80s.
Most Koreans delight in giving gifts, but there are unspoken guidelines for what the gifts should be. Many times my students’ parents have given me food, perfume, soap, even money. This gift was different. Jenny hadn’t asked her mom to buy me some glittery piece of jewellery. She had given me her own store of little treasures, collected one by one and saved in the beautiful little blue box.
This blog is meant to be my own little blue box. Here I will store some of my thoughts and experiences from God, collected one by one. Sometimes, like Jenny’s "pogs", no one but I will know why they are valuable. These are the "pleasant stones" that form the borders of my life - laid there by a God who wants me to remember that the very stones I have stumbled over are the ones that will protect me and make my life beautiful.
I welcome your comments and ideas, but this is not where I want to be discussing the basics (ie. Is the Bible true? Does God exist?). Such questions are valid and important, but I have looked at them long and hard and I am satisfied with the answers that I have. I hope that all of you have examined such questions under the harsh light of reason and mature thinking and tested your answers. If you don’t yet have answers, I hope you will be committed enough to search for the kinds of answers that will satisfy you. If God is there, then the answers are, too.