He's Still Working on Me

Like a lot of people in the Bible Belt, I grew up going to church. There wasn't any question about what you'd do on Sunday...you went to church. It didn't matter what kind of church, you went, it was the norm.

I grew up in fairly small church that also had private school I attended. You could say I had a very "sheltered" childhood. I remember when I was in grade school two neighbors that went to public school talking about New Kids on the Block...they were all the rage...and I had absolutely no clue who they were.

I had this little red record player growing up...and yes, I am old enough to remember records, but just barely. Anyways, I had this record of a Christian artist called "Little Markie" and it had two songs on it. One side had "This Little Light of Mine" and the other had "He's Still Working on Me."

My dad had this bright idea of playing in one Sunday at church and letting me get up in front of everyone and sing it...because it would be SO cute. And it's weird how this is one of my most prominent memories of my childhood. Anyways, these two little old ladies gave me a piece of gum to chew on before church and I distinctly remember my mother telling me to remember to spit it out before I went up to sing. So there I am in the middle of my song, singing away, and I remember...I still have the gum in my mouth. So I did what any other 5 year old would do. I turned around to my dad at the piano and stop mid-song and scream "Daddy, daddy, I forgot to spit out my gum!"

That woke everyone in the church up...I spit it out, finished my song, and returned to my seat beside my very embarrassed mother. Needless to say, I never sang in church again.

However, even at 5 years old I had a vague idea of what this song meant. 20 years later...I can still sing the chorus to this song.

He's still working on me to make me what I ought to be,
It took him just a week to make the moon and the stars,
the sun and the Earth and Jupiter and Mars,
How loving and patient he must be, cause He's still working on me.

I caught myself humming it the other day out of the blue. I stopped to think about it, I mean really think about my life and really found comfort in this little kid's Sunday School song.

God's grace is amazing.