Teachers

It was a frantic scene in the back seat of that crowded squad car, the first Thursday night of July.

A hysterical mother, cradling her one-month-old baby – shot in the latest Chicago sidewalk attack. Beside her, a young woman police officer, working to stop the flow of blood from the tiny child, stealing glances at the blur of lights and traffic streaming by, offering what comfort and encouragement she could over the voices on the radio and the siren overhead.

“Everything is going to be okay – we got you,” she said, her voice steady, gentle, kind. “Hey, come on, now … come on, come on, we’re going to make it through this.”

Incredibly, she was mostly right. The baby, Terriana, though shot in the head and admitted in critical condition, came home from the hospital a couple of weeks ago completely healed and ready to start her second month of life in an inner-city war zone.

The first thing Terriana’s family wanted to do was thank the young officer who’d gotten them so safely and swiftly to the hospital. But it was too late for that.

Officer Ella French, 29, was killed earlier this month at a routine traffic stop, shot through the head herself as she asked a tense and angry young man for his license and registration.

Little Terriana’s family was stunned at the news, remembering Ella’s kind eyes, and that calm voice in the back seat of the squad car.

“She did her part,” the baby’s uncle said, quietly. “She did her part.”

Perhaps that’s really about the most we can hope for, in the brief, unpredictable time we are given. To know, as we grapple with each day’s frustrations and delights, opportunities and indignities, that somewhere amid the rush and sweep of life, we are doing our part. Our best. Something no one else can, or is willing to, or is around to notice needs doing.

It’s a small but crucial comfort, just to know that we are – even if only in that moment – where we are supposed to be. That we are accomplishing our purpose.

It’s also a comfort, looking around – at the next desk, in the doorway across the hall, in the driveway down the street, or perhaps on a TV news clip – to see, and understand, that some other souls are accomplishing theirs. That, too, is a wonderful encouragement.

“She had some attributes that you don’t find in this world anymore,” Officer French’s brother said. “A person of integrity,” he said, who “did the right thing, even when no one was looking.”

Those are rare qualities, indeed. But then, more and more, so are people who do the right thing, even when other people are watching, listening, and taking note.

Millions were watching earlier this month, as Allyson Felix and Sydney McLaughlin set new records on the track in Tokyo.

Allyson became the most medal-winning track-and-field Olympic athlete of all time at the Games, taking home a gold with her teammates from the 4 x 400 relay, on top of a bronze medal in the 400 meters. She ran the latter race in 49.46 seconds, her fastest time in six years, and the fastest time in that event that any 35-year-old mother has ever recorded.

“For me, it’s about so much more than what the clock says,” Allyson told reporters. “My faith is the reason I run. I have this amazing gift that God has blessed me with, and it’s all about using it to the best of my ability.”

Sydney McLaughlin is a much newer Christian than Allyson, but no less fervent in her love for her God and her country. She set a world record, won gold in the 400-meter hurdles at the Games, and wrote:

“What an honor it is to be able to represent not only my country, but also the kingdom of God. What I have in Christ is far greater than what I have or don’t have in life. I pray my journey may be a clear depiction of submission and obedience to God … He has prepared me for a moment such as this. That I may use the gifts He has given me to point all the attention back to Him.”

And then there’s Jane Marczewski, an 85-pound 30-year-old from Ohio, who a few weeks ago made it to the stage of the America’s Got Talent show long enough to sing a song she wrote, share her extraordinary smile, and rock a few jaded judges back on their collective heels.

It wasn’t just the song. Or her matter-of-fact admission that she’s fighting three kinds of cancer.

“I have a two percent chance of survival,” she conceded, quickly brushing the implications of that aside. “But two percent is not zero percent. And I wish people knew how amazing that is.”

People certainly saw how amazing Jane is. Quiet, self-assured, she shines with a calm and joy rarely found in people whose lives are humming along on all cylinders – much less in a woman who’s seen a lot of long-faced doctors, and whose husband walked out when he learned of her dim prognosis.

“I’m so much more than the bad things that have happened to me,” she told the judges. Dumbfounded by the evident truth of that statement, they asked why on earth she was smiling.

“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy,” she said.

“If something so impossibly catastrophic, unimaginably awful can happen,” she later told a reporter, “doesn’t it mean that something unimaginably beautiful and impossibly redemptive can happen?”

The reporter wanted to know how it felt to wow the judges on the show, draw a standing ovation, and have her song go to Number One on iTunes, with three others in the top 100, all in the space of one crowded week.

“If you listen for it, and look for it,” Jane said, “you’ll see Jesus all over it.”

“The note that I’ve been given to sing in the orchestra of life is short and insignificant, truly,” she added, “but I want to sing it well.”

A pause. “I want to sing it well.”

Sitting in a men’s Bible study last week, I was informed, in no uncertain terms, that women shouldn’t teach men in church. Other women, maybe, but not men. Women have no place instructing men.

I was surprised to hear it. Outside the church, I sure am learning a lot from them.