The Notebook the Teacher Kept

In 2014, a young woman named Priya Chandran walked into a community college writing class in Fresno, California, convinced she had nothing worth saying. She was the daughter of farmworkers, the first in her family to finish high school, and she sat in the back row with her arms crossed.

What Priya didn't know was that her professor, Dr. Helen Marsh, had already read her admissions essay — a raw, unpolished paragraph about picking grapes in 112-degree heat. Helen had copied that paragraph into a notebook she kept of students she believed had something extraordinary in them. Before Priya ever raised her hand, before she ever turned in a single assignment, someone had already seen what she carried.

When Helen handed back Priya's first essay covered in encouraging notes, Priya broke down. "Nobody ever told me I could write," she whispered. Helen smiled. "I knew before you walked through that door."

Priya went on to earn her MFA and now teaches writing at that same community college.

This is the astonishing claim Jesus makes to Nathanael: "Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree." Nathanael came skeptical — can anything good come from Nazareth? But Jesus dismantled that skepticism with a single, breathtaking revelation: You were already known. You were already seen. The Almighty doesn't wait for us to prove ourselves. He sees what He placed in us long before we believe it's there.