Thank You, God, For My Teachers

     At our Thanksgiving service at church last night, the emphasis was on being thankful for educators.  Members of the congregation were invited to take the microphone and make comments and here is a slightly expanded version of what I said.

     I thank God for Miss Bizzell, who put up with no nonsense in her classroom and read stories out of the Bible and made them come alive.

     I thank God for Mr. Shoaf, who taught me algebra and the value of preparation.  He taught me how to approach and decipher word problems and to actually enjoy them.

     I thank God for Mrs. Wylie, who taught me how to diagram sentences and to pay attention how words go together.  She also read us stories about the rural South that somehow kept a classroom of 4th and 5th graders quiet and still as the school day wound down.  Judging by her choice of stories, I think Jesse Stuart must've been her favorite author.

     I thank God for Mrs. Keefe, who had to have many serious conversations with my mother (I read a book by Tony Danza a few years ago entitled, I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had, and if Mrs Keefe was alive today I'd contact her and apologize for all the aggravation I caused her).  I thank God for her tough questions, high expectations, and also for believing in me and motivating me to do better.

     These grade-school teachers imparted content, but they also trained me by how they taught.

     Finally, I thank God for my patients, who teach me things everyday.  They tell stories and, in a sense, pose word problems.  They expect me to come prepared, and if I don't know the answer to a question, they expect an explanation of how we're going to find the answer.   They expect me to communicate clearly.  Most surprisingly of all, they believe in me and this certainly motivates me to keep trying to do better.

Striving for Nobility

I saw a movie last weekend called Kingsman: The Secret Service.  It had its moments, which means wait for the rental.  One of the main characters spoke a memorable line, quoting Ernest Hemingway.  Trying to motivate and encourage his young apprentice, the sophisticated and highly accomplished spy said, "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."  The novice spy was motivated and encouraged, and so was I.  This quote has stewardship, one of my favorite principles, written all over it.

However, I think true nobility is displayed in the effort one expends in the quest to be superior to one's former self.  At a certain point physical prowess declines for everyone, but the determination and perseverance required to be fit are noble character traits that even an old guy like me can aspire to.

As with athletic endeavors, academic performance is improved only through the same determination and perseverance, and that's admirable and noble.  And since there's always more I could learn, this can be a lifetime pursuit.  I just wish I could remember everything I've ever learned.

The same noble determination and perseverance can help me grow as a Christian.  I believe sanctification is a work of God's grace, but by his grace he somehow uses Bible study, prayer, worship with brothers and sisters, work and service, life circumstances, and many other things as means by which I can be "enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness."  Funny thing about Christian growth, though.  I have found out that as I have grown as a Christian, the gulf between my efforts and God's standards seems to grow ever wider.  "Wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

A Place With a Reputation for Hopelessness

In the late 1800s, no one really knew what it was like at the North Pole.  No one had ever been there.  Various expeditions had tried and failed.  The most prominent scientists of the day believed that the ice pack that was found each time a ship headed north was just a ring of ice and that if a ship could just get through that ring, beyond it there would be open sea all the way to the North Pole and that it might even be warm up there.  On 8 July 1879, after month’s of planning, the USS Jeannette set sail from San Francisco, its destination being the North Pole.  It sailed through the Bering Strait and by 7 September the Jeannette was stuck in the ice of the Arctic Ocean.  Getting stuck was part of the plan.  The ship was specially constructed so that it could withstand the pressure of the ice.  And though they didn’t know what was beyond the ice pack, scientists knew the ice migrated and they figured a ship stuck in the ice would eventually migrate through to what they thought was the open polar sea.  The crew of the Jeannette fell victim to this erroneous, though widely held, scientific theory.  On 11th June 1881, twenty-one months after getting stuck in the ice, the ice around the ship melted enough so that she once again floated on open water.  For the first time in almost two years, the crew experienced again what it was like to be aboard a ship at sea.  However, the very next day, on 12 June 1881, the ice pack began to shift and move and then it converged on the ship and, despite the special construction of the ship, this time the ice crushed the USS Jeanette and it sank, stranding 33 men and 40 sled dogs on the ice.  They were 700 miles from the North Pole but they knew if they wanted to survive, they had to head south.  The nearest land was the arctic coast of Central Siberia, almost 1000 miles away.  The crew, of course, had heard of Siberia and knew it to be a frozen wasteland.  It was a place of exile, a place where people were sent to die.  In order to survive, they had to get to a place where most people didn’t survive.  In his book about the voyage of the Jeannette, Hampton Sides said this about Siberia, “Their only hope was a place with a reputation for hopelessness.”  Their only hope was a place with a reputation for hopelessness.   When I read that sentence I thought about the cross.  The cross was certainly a place with a reputation for hopelessness.  Crucifixion as a way of execution was highly reliable.  No one attached to a cross came out of it alive.  This was also true of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and when he died on the cross his disciples mourned and went into hiding, thinking it was all over.  It really isn’t surprising that they should have behaved like this.  Their teacher, their leader, the one Peter had described as “the Christ, the son of the living God,” was dead and buried.  But, of course, three days later Jesus rose from the dead and eventually appeared in the flesh to his disciples and many other followers.  With the help of the Holy Spirit, the apostles came to understand not just the meaning of the cross, but the absolute necessity of it.  “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  Each of us deserves to suffer the wrath of God.  We can only be “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."  Our only hope is the cross, a place with a reputation for hopelessness.