A new math.

I'm currently working with a young woman to improve her math skills.

When she was in middle school, it was determined that she would never be able to master anything beyond the basics of addition and subtraction. Her teachers felt it was sufficient that she learn how to tell time and to balance a checkbook. She was told that anything more, would have been reaching beyond her abilities.

Well, I'm no expert; but, I do disagree with this assessment.

She has a fine mind, and is perfectly capable of developing sufficient math skills to pass the math requirement on the GED math test.

Today I introduced the concept of a number line and I explained how numbers exist on both sides of zero. There are negative numbers and there are positive numbers. Then we talked about the space that exists between two numbers, and how there are whole numbers, mixed numbers, ect.

Just to tantalize her a little, I also told her how we perceive the space between two numbers on a number line as a finite space; and yet, when you begin to break that space down into fractions, something almost magical happens. The finite space widens, It more than widens, it becomes endless.

For example, if you start with 1/4, then move to 1/5, and on to 1/6, you begin to see how you could count forever and never reach the end.....it's as if infinity has somehow been captured in one tiny section of a simple, hand drawn number line.

As we were discussing this concept, my student paused, and she said, "I think God must be like that too. We think God fits in this nice little contained space, when really, He stretches beyond anything we can ever understand."

I smiled when she said that. I smiled because I knew that she had truly understood; and even more than that, she had recognized our Creator's signature lovingly encoded between the numbers 1 and 2, on our silly little number line.

My friend returned my smile. "Thank you." she said.

"You're welcome." I replied.

In some strange way, she had become the number one, and I had become the two, and everything in between slipped away into infinity.

The old hurt of being told she was too stupid to learn, slipped away.

The old hurt of being told she was worthless and would never amount to anything, slipped away.

The insecurity, the math anxiety, it all began to slip away.

And where she had once only seen the ragged edges of her own brokenness, she now perceived the signature of God, lovingly enscribed, lovingly present, loving her to wholeness.

And I bet you thought math was boring, didn't you?