Back To School: The roles of students and teachers

As the school year begins, I thank God for being an educator and for my 175+ students registered in this new semester and quarter.  It is the greatest privilege to teach, and the responsibility is awesome to say the least.   The first days of classes, I am always amazed to see all the new faces of young adults and many older people as well as they sit in expectation, nervous, and with many fearful and often apprehensive about their abilities to do well.  Remembering myself as a student, I recall the first-day anxieties and sometimes dread of particular subjects.  But I also recall the joy of my university years, which are often the final years of formal education, young adulthood, and pre-marriage.  It is a unique time of life for both older and younger students.

It is a privilege to be a student, particularly in light of the absurd expense of higher education and the incredible sacrifices of students, government, and parents to educate people for employment in the United States.  As such, it is necessary for students to take their roles in classrooms very, very seriously.  Today the competition for jobs is extraordinary and terrifying.  Only the best of the best will acquire jobs in their chosen fields, while the others will become lowly paid laborers with student loans that will cripple them for decades to come.  Students need the top grades, the most documented community service hours, international experiences, and demonstrated and data based health to ensure their successes and security in the current economic and political climate.  Students must shine, and their efforts must be exemplary.  It is no longer enough to simply earn a college degree.  Far more is required, and the stresses upon students are far greater than in the any other time in history.

Educators also have a higher responsibility to students, for they must ensure that knowledge and skills are imparted so that students earn the grades required for continued financial aid, and that students can, in fact, shine in their courses of study.  Educators also have the responsibility to enhance all courses with ethics, morality, and in service to God’s calling for our work.  As teachers, we are not simply English, math, or science people.  We are also God’s servants who have a higher calling to love and to serve our neighbors in need.  Students, all made in the image of God, and who contain all of God’s unique attributes, are such neighbors in need.  As such, they must be treated with love, kindness, and great effort on our parts.  We, as teachers, must model the Golden Rule, and we must also help students to understand their uniqueness as physical and spiritual human beings, and they must be treated accordingly.  We must always remember that even the most difficult students are God’s people, and our responsibility to them is specific, measured, and in service to God himself. 

As teachers, we have a limited amount of influential time with students, and we must make the most of this precious time.  Our calling is a God-given privilege.  Our influence can be extraordinary, God willing, or it can be ineffectual or even damaging.  As we cross paths with these new and amazing people, let us be profoundly grateful that God called us to teach, and that our students were called to cross paths with us.   First and foremost, see students as God’s children and, as such,  your brothers and sisters.  Treat them accordingly so that they know your love and effort toward them is something special, higher, and meaningful.  Demonstrate our Lord’s commandment to love one another so that students will leave classes not only with new knowledge and skills, but with a sense of the value of neighborliness, service to others, and human fellowship, which should be the model for every classroom experience.

The roles of students and teachers are profound, as are all our experiences as God’s children.  We must never forget that there is no such thing as coincidence in God’s world.  Every encounter with every student and teacher is an opportunity to be more than students and teachers.  It is an opportunity, provided by God and to His blessed service, to grow in love and kindness toward others, and to acknowledge such.  Our efforts are expected and far more important than “subjects” in schools.    Nancy

 

 

“…a gentle and quiet spirit”

I am the first to admit that the biblical call for women to have a gentle and quiet spirit bothered me.  It seemed for many years that this spoke to a behavioral preference for women being very close to “seen and not heard.”  This was particularly difficult for me as I am a natural communicator, talker, writer, teacher, radio broadcaster, and researcher who loves to debate.  I am also at times, shall we say, animate in communicative passions.  I do love to debate and love the Socratic method of questioning just about everything to enhance critical thinking and conversation, particularly in my classrooms, and for complex topics involving human behaviors and responses.  I realize that I do not have a particularly gentle or quiet nature as my nature and job  is to talk, explain, verbally ponder, question, investigate, and then ultimately communicate findings both verbally and in writing.  As such, this biblical notion of the  “gentle and quiet spirit” seemed a tad insulting to the woman in the mirror.  However, knowing the Spirit would move me to eventual understanding, one day…He did.

As a teacher/researcher, hours upon hours are spent silently reading, pondering, researching, writing, editing, re-pondering, re-reading, and re-pondering again.  In truth, these are the best and most extraordinary hours of my days, and Amy and I both live for the hours where we have our houses to ourselves where, in fact, our spirits do quiet themselves to points of reflective thinking and, particularly to biblical studies that absolutely enhance spiritual gentleness.  And one day it dawned on me why the “gentle and quiet spirit” was desired by God.  It is because our lives as women, which are called to direct service to families and neighbors, and in my case students and audiences as well, must be quieted and gently restored and renewed every day in order to achieve the daily calling to such service and, at the same time, remain sane. 

Women are caretakers, which is a demanding and unending role, and it commands verbal attributes coupled with unending daily work.   God tells us that the gentle and quiet spirit is pleasing to Him because He understands the hectic nature of womanhood, mothering, caring for men and their needs, constant cooking, constant cleaning, and daily family demands and maintenance.  Clearly, in order for women to accomplish such work without daily meltdowns, a gentle and quiet spirit, which is God-given, must be foundational to emotionally survive the demands and needs of self, house, employment, and all others.  The gentle and quiet spirit coordinates, plans, contemplates, organizes, and prepares the daily functions and services for many, many people.

It also dawned on me that older women seemed much more capable in spiritual gentleness and quietness because their lives had, to a large effect, slowed down to longer points and years of experienced reflections, and that they have lived more of the seasons of God’s purposes for their womanhood.  Hence, I was reminded that life is a process, not an event.

God is pleased by our gentle and quiet spirits because God loves us in an openly learning, capable, and comprehending state, which remains  fully capable of love, and this is why the Bible is so important to women.  God does not want us to be seen and not heard.  God wants us emotionally and physically prepared to love and to serve many, and he knows that women’s lives are hectic and that they are often overworked and without acknowledged appreciation.  He calls us to remain in the Word and open to the Spirit, which lovingly bestows a gentle and quieting renewal of our hearts and spirits so that our work remains steadfastly in His service while loving others constantly ensues, which is His commandment.  Truth.  Nancy

The Beauty of “Woman’s Work”

While I was making three months’ worth of laundry soap this morning, I was wondering why my friend, Amy, hadn’t called.  I was actually worried because we talk every morning after the first loads of laundry are in, the kitchens and bathrooms are cleaned, and the first break is taken around 8:30 a.m.  The morning phone calls are our time of amending grocery lists, coordinating the needs and schedules of our children, and brainstorming our next paychecks and shopping locations.  Come 10:30 this morning, I had not heard from Amy, and I was worried.  When I had just cleaned up the mess from the laundry soap project, I called her and she informed me she was in town and on her way over.  When she arrived with her youngest son, she told me she had discovered a meat sale and hit the ground running early.  She made a phone call to get two of her children enrolled in a class, and then just as quickly was gone to clean her house and to get her meat purchases divided, bagged, and in the freezer, and to coordinate lunch and dinner.  I then started on a major bathroom clean, the kind that involves scrub brushes, wall washing, and de-scaling the shower head, and now I sit pondering this day, which is now early afternoon, and the oftentimes overlooked work of womanly domesticity.

Will anyone notice the three months worth of homemade laundry soap made and stored, the scoured bathroom, the search for, driving for, and dividing and repackaging of the meat?  Will anyone notice the immaculate kitchens, the homemade breads, today’s egg salad, or tonight’s dinner?  Will anyone say thank you for the course enrollment or for waking people at the requested hours, for the transporting of children to their duties and functions, for cleaning the fish tanks, changing the litter box, feeding the dogs and cats, sweeping the floors, folding the fresh laundry, doing the dishes, feeding and watering the chickens and gathering the eggs?  Probably not.

Will anyone notice that these tasks, which are standard, are accomplished mostly on a daily basis or others much like them, and prior to working jobs outside of the home ?  No, they will not, but the beauty of the thing is that there is beauty in the work because  it is based upon love.   Love of family, love of our homes, love of the service, and even love of the labors; Amy and I learned a long time ago that our work was of value in spite of the thanklessness.  We learned a long time ago that womanly work  is 1) biblical, and 2) gives us the opportunity to think and reflect, pray, commune with God, and even spend moments reading and writing because our work is so practiced, so understood, and so spiritually implanted within our beings that somehow joy and pleasure is taken in the outcomes of our labors even though no one particularly notices and every mess will reappear within hours.  This is the reality of the old saying, ” …a woman’s work is never done”, and it never is, but  it’s beauty, none the less, exists everyday because it is a work based upon love, and that love is God-given as is the desire to perform such labors.

Never feel unappreciated for this work that often leaves us exhausted and seemingly without reward or even acknowledgement, for the rewards are endless in the continuance of our families, by the grace of God.  It is a good and honorable thing to be a woman, and our work as women has Godly value as help mates and mothers, homemakers, and in the daily and normal functioning of husbands and children for which we are responsible in both duty and reality.  Our work is beyond measure in the great scheme of things because it is life-long in task and life-long obedience to God’s will and design.  Our work matters, every day and  unimaginably so, even without anyone noticing.  God, however,  notices, and we, as women, do know the value of our work.  Take pleasure in your labors, and give the glory to God for  your pleasure.   Nancy

Thoughts on my daughter as she enters womanhood

My youngest daughter recently turned eighteen-years-old, and for the past week many thoughts entered my mind regarding her life experiences and future.  She was never an ordinary girl.  She was the kind of person who excelled beyond expectations in every venture and at every age.  She was never the “silly” girl and never the difficult teenager that parents fret and worry about for years.  Certainly a part of her uniqueness revolved around a period where our lives became terribly difficult following a loss of four immediate family members, under-employment, and the resultant regrouping through loneliness and sadness.  During those years, she became an avid reader of science and history books and the Bible.  As such, she developed into a complex and critical thinker far beyond her years while discovering a passion for learning.  Her abilities at a young age were, clearly, God-given.

Today, at eighteen, she is in her junior year at a university.  Next summer she will work overseas, and one year from now she will study abroad for one semester and then return home to finish her final semester and bachelor’s degree at nineteen-years-old.  She will then leave to continue on at another university, probably leaving home for good.  I knew years ago that she would leave earlier than most do in today’s child-retaining culture, and I knew I would recognize the difficulty of releasing her from my daily oversight, but I find myself so terribly blessed to have spent the last eighteen years of my life with this blessed daughter of God even knowing this may be my last year with her under my roof and immediate care.

She is a person with long-standing goals and dreams.  She wants to teach at a university, and she wants life-long access to education, studies, and research, which are clearly the gifts God gave to her.  She also wants marriage and 10 children (yes, ten), coupled with a career teaching the subjects she loves.  I admire her goals and dreams, and I see her working diligently to accomplish those dreams with remarkable and steadfast determination.  My only fear, of course, is that the world, with its disappointments, darkness, and hurled wrenches, sometimes alters the best laid plans.  This I know from personal experience.

I constantly remind her that God’s plan for our lives will play out and that people, circumstances, unanticipated situations, and bumps in the road are purposeful and manifest so that we actually do complete our actual missions in life according to His purpose.  In her studies of the Bible, reformed theology, history, science, and philosophy, I pray for her focus to remain Christ-centered, that the Word and scholarship will work together in her mind toward a greater love for and understanding of Christ and His purpose, and also in her ability to love humankind in all that she experiences in her life.  I remind her that God’s plan, which is far larger and far more complex than we can comprehend, exists for the pleasure of the Triune Godhead and, as such, specifically for her as well as an elected and justified Christian woman.  I also pray for a wholly Christian husband who will be capable of demonstrating his love for her after Christ’s love, profound unselfishness, and sacrifice for his Church.  I pray that her husband will fully comprehend this model for marriage. I pray for his demonstrated deeds, and I pray that she will, in marriage, live the covenant of marriage as Christ’s covenant with his Church in the extraordinary tenderness of sacrificial love.

The world is a scary place, but it is also full of God’s elect who are living, breathing temples of the Holy Spirit, which leads and helps them during their sanctification, praise be to God.  I pray for her happiness in knowing Christ and making maximum use of her life to His service and glory.  I pray that she proclaims the gospel with her God-given brilliance and with great joy knowing how dearly she is loved by her Savior and her mother. 

It has been a profound blessing in my life to be so privileged to raise this blessed daughter of God.   Nancy

Understanding Scriptures vs. Scripting: Recommended reading

Don’t you find it really, really sad that manners have become lost to political correctness to such a degree that openly disagreeing with the political left or right has become criminal, or should I say terroristic?  People are actually being arrested for declaring their opinions on faith, on homosexuality, abortion, health care, marriage, farming, global warming/cooling, vaccinating children, raising meat and dairy animals, eating/diet, and all manner of other politically charged and seemingly regulated topics of “social” interest.  Clearly, what we are allowed to say has become scripted by corporate, law enforcement, and governmental think tanks, and any differing opinions have become wholly suspect of radical or anti-social behavior, even to the point of arrests.  All I can really say is, “…wow.”

This is a new trajectory for the United States of America.  Surely we saw the writing on the wall; surely we saw this coming, but none the less, its arrival, including thousands of new vehicle check points, is unsettling to say the very least, especially coupled with the United Nations and DC politicians together attempting to eliminate Second Amendment rights through  international laws.  All totaled, we then have limited or no freedom of speech coupled with no privacy or self-defense plus limited or no  hunting rights.  Yes, a new trajectory for the United States has ensued and, yes, we should have seen this coming.  Frankly, it is very scary…very scary indeed.  However, for people of faith, this should be nothing new in history nor any surprise considering the nature of humankind, which always sticks to its nature.  To people of faith I say, take heart.

I spent the last week reading several old documents that I highly recommend.  They are:  The Heidelberg Catechism, The Belgic Confession of Faith, The Canons of Dort, and The Westminster Confession.  These are documents about the nature and beliefs of the Reformed Church.  As a person who has spent over a decade studying the political and economic internationalism movement, I have found tremendous frustration in what the American people fail to realize about the workings and intentions of their government, nor the international treaties that they have been signed into that the U.S. government failed to mention over the last forty years, causing the tremendous changes in a  country where we used to be able to express  personal opinions.  The research has been daunting and heart-sickening in truth.  However, and as I previously stated, the knowledge comes as no surprise considering the history of humankind.  As a species, we simply never get anything right.  We simply create more wars, violence, atrocities, plagues, sickness, poverty, genocides, and every other manner of wickedness and, sadly, mostly always under the banners of old or new governance or regimes. Humankind does not improve its condition because it cannot improve its condition.  Humankind suffers from total depravity.  Anything sick and atrocious will be done; past, present, and future.

That is why I also attempt to understand humankind, including myself, through the Bible and other works that explain the deepest meanings of the Bible, and I find that when I study, I can, in fact, make heads and tails of human history, including governmental manipulations of every make and measure.  In the old documents listed above, human nature, as so defined in the Bible, is explained in terms of what it is in its natural state, which is completely inclined and drawn toward sinfulness, wickedness, and death.  These documents explain how we are born into this state and condition, and that it is, in fact, our nature.  This understanding actually stands to clarify history and answers the question of why we never learn from the horrors of the past.  The simple answer is that we desire the horrors because we are drawn to evilness to such a degree that we actually have a predisposition to death sensing somehow that it is all we deserve.

The documents listed are hundred of years old, but they define a systematic faith so clearly and make so much sense, that a fog is literally lifted.  We cannot understand our world unless we understand our place in it AND the nature of humanity, and we cannot understand humanity or its history UNLESS we understand the nature of human sin.

Though I realize that many who read this article may not be Christians or may not have read the Bible, I ask you to please, please read the above list of documents.  If you are frightened about the trajectory of the United States and the changes you see happening in your nation, these documents will help you to understand yourselves, your neighbors both local and global, and why we, as people, constantly suffer beneath lies, manipulations, hatred, violence, sickness, and constant theft.  You all feel it, sense it, and comprehend betrayal, no matter whether you hail from a red state or a blue state, are a progressive or a conservative, or a man or woman; you sense the betrayal and the fear.  Please, let yourselves become wise and knowledgable in the actual meanings of God’s Words.  The Bible is not simply a “religious” document, full of televised political propaganda and misinterpretations.  It is a deeply profound book about you and how and why God included you in His creation.  Knowing the Bible is a big book, read the documents listed in this article first, because they are also filled with actual verses from the Bible that answer the most profound questions about who we are and why we do what we do, and why and how God remains in control over the human condition.  You cannot understand the world you live in unless you understand God’s plan and your place in His plan.  Read.    Nancy

Thoughts on Rationalizing Wrongs

It is certainly not difficult to realize the total depravity of humankind because it gives clarity and reason for the unending horrors of human actions, intentions, and the never-improved human condition.  People are quite obviously depraved by nature, including the best of them.  We are drawn like magnets to awfulness.   But in this awfulness, we often reflect to the point of better behaviors and thoughts, and often these thoughts on improving ourselves are helpful in making us less depraved and evil.  However, “our” thoughts, rationalizing our depravity, often provide the very excuses we use to continue walking  and speaking in evil ways and actions.  Why do I know this?  Because I am an expert in the use of thought to rationalize my wrongs and wrong doings.  The problem is, wrongs cannot be rationalized…ever.

We know that wisdom and knowledge matter.  We know that truth matters, but being born into a state of total depravity, our ability to rationalize is also compromised.  As such, our rationalizations are flawed, particularly regarding ourselves.  The fact that we desire and try to rationalize our evil behaviors is proof that our thinking is flawed straight out of the cage, that being the cage of our fallen conditions.  As such, we cannot “think” ourselves into corrective actions, beliefs, or even into love, even when we do love.  “Our” thoughts are, by nature, defective and fallacious, and because we are so prone to sinfulness, we have an auto-pilot rationalization mechanism which constantly operates in an attempt to defend our attractions to wrong doings.  Though sadly our rationalizations may provide  temporary comfort to our sickly egos, we do not improve.  We simply continue to live erroneously immersed beneath the sinfulness of our very natures. 

It is true that we cannot think our way out of our attraction to wrong-doing.  We just can’t do it because wrong-doing is the way and modus operandi of the world.  However, there is a way to lessen this horrible burden of our human failures, and that Way is to acknowledge the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who lifts this terrible burden from our minds and hearts.  As the only perfected human being who ever walked the earth, He was sacrificed by his Father in order that we could be cleansed of death and the depravity of our life-long sins.  This divine mercy, kindness and love from our Father in heaven is well beyond our comprehension to fathom; that he gave His son as a blood sacrifice, to be brutally tortured to death in the most vicious of deaths, and as a wholly innocent person, for depraved human beings.  In this divine act of grace and love, an act that we simply cannot fully comprehend, our thoughts, our “rationalizations” are relieved from the pain of their inadequacies.  Our actual rationalization is only in Jesus Christ, who forgave our sins in His torment.

Though it is also true that not all humankind will be forgiven, the elected takers of the gift of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will, in fact and wisdom, and in knowledge and truth, improve.   We will always struggle with our magnetic natures to sin, but a new desire to do God’s work on earth will trump our sinful natures.  A new faith is given to emerge triumphant, and a new understanding is given to swell in the hearts of those who know, love, and follow the ways, Words, and plans of the Redeemer. 

Do not think you can rationalize your wrongs with the power of your flawed thinking.  You cannot.  Rather, confess your wrongs to your Father in heaven.  Ask for His forgiveness, which is already yours when you believe in Him.  I cannot begin to tell you how much this blessing and this grace have meant to me.  In one more truth, my brain no longer has to struggle amidst worldly fallacies that I enact in myself.  I am simply His and fully forgiven.    All glory to God Almighty.   Nancy