I am a teacher.

And while that title means I am an educator, a story teller, a listener, a mentor, a nurse, and sometimes almost get mistaken for a mom, I am not everything.

I’m not in fact, superhuman. I am not magically feeling patient 100% of the time, and I don’t know the answer to every thing you can think of asking me.

And very clearly lately I’ve noticed another thing about myself: I am not omnipresent.

When one student nearly passes out during Bible memory recitation, I cannot remain at the front of the room and rush to her side simultaneously.

I need to choose where I am most needed to be at every moment of the day.

Obviously, the sick child was priority in this situation.

And while I was calling her mom, I couldn’t be teaching math.

When I did return to class, I could only answer one student at a time, and while doing that, I couldn’t message the moms of my other sick students to say what their homework assignments were.

We got through the morning, and even with four students absent, there were still oodles of questions.

Questions represented by hands waving in my face.

Hands accompanied by pleading eyes and desparate expressions.

Hands which I can only answer, one at a time.

During recess, I can’t play soccer while sitting in the classroom helping a student catch up on homework, and I can’t be in four different homes teaching the absentees, either.

In the whirling chaos, I did briefly notice that I must be lacking something if this is all supposed to be possible.

But gradually, things settled down. No one else got sick. Math class mercifully ended. We had recess. My assistant marked books and I almost sang for joy to the rhythm of her red pen as she returned lessons to students.

It was in Bible class that I finally had time to breathe.

And that’s when I was confronted with the vocabulary word, omnipresent. An attribute of God’s character, meaning “everywhere-present.”

He is capable of being everywhere…

And I am not.

Well, my sixth graders were beginning to look perplexed at this concept; the word omnipresent is long and complicated… What does it really mean?

So of course, I used my favourite teaching strategy – apply the concept to real life with a little imagination.

In this situation, I got to teach them a concept while doing some beautiful daydreaming out loud.

“Imagine if I were omnipresent,” I began. “I could stand by each of your desks and help you all with your math at once. Even if you were on different problems. And none of you would ever have to wait for me to help you. I could even be relaxing in my house right now, while enjoying myself here teaching all of you. I could join you at recess while helping someone with corrections inside, and of course I’d be at the homes of the absent students helping them with their homework, too.”

My class started to laugh as comprehension dawned. I opened it up for comments, as follows…

“So would there be 23 of you then, since there are 23 of us?”

“But – we’d be bumping into you all the time if there’s that many of you!”

“No, because each of her would still just be in one place then! Instead there’s just one of her, but, like, she’s everywhere.”

“So basically, you’d just be really, really, big?”

“We’re still bumping into her all the time then.”

And finally, my favourite… “I think I’m glad you’re not omnipresent. That’d be scary!”

Yeah… I think I’m glad, too. Even though there are days I’d love to be able to reach around better, I don’t have the mental capacity or stamina to handle the attribute of omnipresence.

I am glad that God is omnipresent, and that He can fill in the places where I lack because of my humanness.

He can work things out in areas of my life that I will never see.

He can solve multiple problems at once, and He’s never too busy helping someone else to answer me.

He’s present not only everywhere in my life today, but also in every moment of my tomorrows.

And I’m glad. Glad that God is omnipresent and I’m not.

Yeah, there are times I wish I could be in more places at once… times I wish I could see through the mist that hides my future…

But God knows what I can handle, and He chooses to show me only what I in the moment can manage.

He knows what’s beyond the mist, and sometimes He is the mist, intentionally hiding things from me that I don’t need to worry about today.

I’m not omnipresent.

But I’m so glad I have a Father looking out for me Who is.