If the Rapture were to be tonight, I believe tomorrow there would be scarcely a handful of teachers left in public schools. Yet, daily we are labeled as subversive and hear accusations of indoctrination and worse. They say we are teaching our students heinous things when in reality, we protect them, love them and make every effort to teach them to read, write, think and cope in this world. Public educators are being discredited, and slowly, slyly, gradually de-funded. And the worst is probably the looks of distrust we get when we admit our profession.
As a group we are the majority. We are also kind, trusting and compassionate and easily pushed around. This has left us vulnerable to political attacks and use as political pawns. As educators we can’t wrap our heads around why people would knowingly do this. That is because we are not running the same race as them and certainly are not motivated by the same things. If we were, we wouldn’t be educators.
So what can we do? Two things will help, the third is the real answer.
First, we must educate ourselves as to how the enemy works and who the enemy is and what is his motivation. Ignorance of the enemy is not acceptable. Read and enroll in online educator political discussions. This is non-negotiable.
Second, we must vote and vote only for those we know and trust. No straight ticket votes and no assumptions due to a D or an R or any rhetoric or promises. Vote based on actions, not words. And if you don’t know about a candidate, do not guess and vote. Just skip voting for that particular office. The ballot is not a STAAR test. You can leave some blanks.
Third, and this is the most important thing: pray. Pray daily and pray big and pray again. Pray for every child and every parent. Pray for our state leadership. Even if it is only five minutes, make time in the morning to bring it all to the Father. He is why we do what we do. He is all-powerful and you are His child who serves His precious children.
If you were to pick an animal to represent courage, what would you pick? I’m thinking it would probably be a lion or another fierce animal. If you were to pick a profession that is courageous, what would you pick? I would bet my husband’s pickup that you picked a firefighter or a cop and you are picturing a big beefy strong man. Ladies, stop that right now! This is not that kind of blog.
What if we have courage all wrong? What if courage is best represented by a tiny mouse? What if the most courageous career is a waitress, a teacher or a nurse? What if courage is more commonly found in women and children and not in grown men? Mind-blowing, huh?
So what is courage? Maybe a definition would be helpful. If you were to define courage, you might say that it is acting without fear. But that is actually the opposite of the definition in the dictionary. You might be surprised to know that both the Oxford dictionary and Webster’s include fear in their definition of courage. My favorite is, “Courage is the ability to do something that frightens one”. By this definition, courage and fear are tied together. If you are not frightened, how could you be courageous? This means courage doesn’t exist without fear. So those of us who are the most frightened are actually in a position to be the most courageous!
So if you want to see courage in biblical action, don’t look at Samson. Look at those in the most vulnerable positions like Rahab, the prostitute who led the Israelite spies to safety. Look at Mary the mother of Jesus, who had to evade folks trying to kill her baby and raise the Savior of the world. Look at Esther who had to stare possible death in the face and stand up to the King in a culture of manipulation and male domination. Look to those who lived in fear of being fed to the lions, who hid in caves and cellars but still continued on spreading the Good News anyway.
Oh what I would give to be one of those happy-go-lucky fearless people! But they are not courageous. They can’t be. Because without fear, there is no courage. Only the most fearful have the capacity for the most courage. This is quite upside-down to our accepted world definition of courage. It doesn’t take as much courage to be a mighty lion as it does to be a tiny “snack-a-licious” mouse.
Notice also in the definition of courage, it is not the ability to do something that frightens EVERYONE but the ability to do something that frightens ONE. It may be your own personal fear, something in which no one else takes issue. So next time you wake up fearing what the day ahead will bring, know that you have been placed in a position that demands courage. Pray to God for the ability to keep on keeping on. Trust Him to give you the courage to face your own personal giants. Then at the end of this day, celebrate the victory of being a courageous hero over your fear.
I never got poetry. Lord knows my English teachers tried. But when you throw in a melody, some harmony, and maybe even an orchestra, I am hooked. Music is the greatest gift! Music soothes and it heals. It changes a dull day to something joyful. And you don’t have to be talented to enjoy it. In my case, it is a tool God has used to comfort and inspire me time and time again.
One of the all time great songs in my life is Stephen Curtis Chapman’s Great Adventure with the Prologue on the album. Step back into 1992 and read a portion of what this song has to say.
We'll travel long, over mountains so high We'll go through valleys so low Still through it all we'll find that This is the greatest journey that the human heart will ever see The love of God will take us far beyond our wildest dreams
Saddle up your horses, we've got a trail to blaze Through the wild blue yonder of God's amazing grace Let's follow our leader into the glorious unknown This is a life like no other, whoa whoa this is the great adventure
I love a good adventure story: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, that sort of story. The elements of an adventure are the following: they have a hero, a quest, a villain, an unknown dangerous environment, a big risk and a transformation. This also perfectly describes a well-lived life of a Christian. Christ-following is not a boring life. It is a life lived to the fullest.
Stephen Curtis Chapman, who wrote the aforementioned song suffered an incredible tragedy years after writing it. The highs come with lows. Many of my friends are blessed with amazing marriages that some people look for their entire life and never find. Some of those same people are now living in the reality of widowhood, struggling everyday to try to pick up one foot and put it in front of the other. And I have seen those who have been given the strongest bodies struggling to survive another day of cancer. It seems the higher our highs or the bigger the blessings, the more pronounced the lows. I cannot explain it. I can’t understand it.
Life IS a great adventure full of majestic peaks and low dark valleys, boring endless deserts and beautiful boundless springs of joy. So what can we do about it? Hang on for the ride of your life and follow your Leader into the great unknown. Celebrate the highs, mourn the lows and realize that you are not in control. Adopt an attitude of joy in the big adventure because we know how the story ends.
I have lived with the most innately discerning human for 37 years today. Being lacking in this area, I am ever-amazed at his abilities. He seems to see through to the motives of people and only on a rare occasion is he proven wrong. Discernment is like being able, at a glance, to recognize a beneficial snake from a venomous one, on the fly, while you are a little freaked out. I feel discernment is a very crucial skill in our world and especially for Christians.
How can we as Christians love everyone yet still have the discernment to know when someone is manipulating us? Because I am old, I have seen many instances where Christians were suckered in and manipulated by someone who does harm to them or to their church. I also have seen precious people who adamantly believe they should love and accept everyone be totally lost when they are forced to take a stand. They have no ability to discern. On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen Christians who build tall walls around them and their family because they aren’t able to discern the beneficial from the poisonous. These opposite approaches to living the Christian life have the same issue. We need discernment.
How do you determine a beneficial snake from a poisonous viper? It is through education and experience. Without education we either kill all the snakes, good and bad or we accept all the snakes and end up in the emergency room or worse. The analogy holds up for discernment. But the hard way to learn discernment is experience. Trust me, life is short and we really don’t want to learn everything the hard way. Thankfully, discernment also comes through education and the Bible is the ultimate source of stories of good and bad discernment and how to live as a Christ follower in an evil world. The problem for most of us is the Bible is tough to understand so we opt for an easier path.
Here is one example of the stuff that makes reading the Bible more of an adventure than a pastime, and definitely not for the faint of heart. In the beginning of Genesis, God designed one man for one woman. Then a few chapters later we see Ol’ Abraham taking more than his fair share of women. Yet he was flippin’ Abraham, the Big Kahuna of faith! So confusing! Mysteriously, if we prayerfully seek God we will begin to sort through the culture and sin and understand the important lessons about God in this book of stories of flawed humans realizing it doesn’t read like a novel. And it shouldn’t be read like a simplistic rule book either.
Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson is a book about how to read the Bible and is very helpful in understanding it. This book is challenging reading for me but I must say that I have begun to grasp some points that Dr. Peterson made. One of the main concepts in his book is that the Bible is largely written in stories(narratives) and should be read as such. We shouldn’t pluck a verse out of a story and call it quits. The very essence of God is expressed in each of these narratives. For example, Esther is a book of the Bible that never mentions God but the character and values of God are woven through this story. It is a wonderful story and I highly recommend reading it. However, if we approach this reading of Esther literally, we will be out skewering our enemies on tall poles. Each narrative in the Bible is set in a different time, culture and location. We must take this into consideration before we attempt to interpret any story of the Bible. So if we educate ourselves to the setting and culture in which the story is written, we will certainly begin to understand more about God and how to recognize a viper.
As Christians, we have to decide how to treat sin and our fellow sinners. I believe the best advice is in the actions of Jesus. He did not treat them all the same. He did not hug all the snakes. On one hand, Jesus said, “He who is without sin should cast the first stone” choosing not to condemn. But on the other hand, Jesus set his foot down adamantly against many proud pious folks, calling them snakes and broods of vipers. How did he know what to condemn? He was so brilliant. But He was God. He could look into the heart. And I am not and cannot. Thankfully he left us with the Holy Spirit and a Bible full of stories and advice. This is our resource so we must seek it out wisely.
Christians must be smart and discerning. We cannot accept everyone at face value. We must look through the facade. We must see past the fashionable clothing and alluring words and consider the motives of the heart. But we must also realize we are still sinners and not above anyone else. We have simply accepted a beautiful gift that others have rejected. It is like walking on a tight rope, there is always tension because it is not easy. If there is no tension when it comes to discernment, chances are we are choosing not to discern but choosing to accept all or reject all. We must discern the non-venomous snakes from the venomous and the best way to do that is through prayerfully, relentlessly studying the Bible.
