Day 135: Being Students

"Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious."  1 Peter 2:1-3

As Christians, we are devoted to living a life as a student.

We will forget that sometimes.  In school, there are usually some students who might understand concepts more easily than others, so those students can help those around them.  But, in the end, the teacher still has more knowledge than the students.  Perhaps later on in their lives, the students will have the same, if not more, knowledge and wisdom than their teachers.

As students, we are called to maintain certain disciplines.  I'm sure there are many teachers out there who wish to have students who are not judgmental, kind, patient, and, above all, willing to learn.  We are not supposed to be correcting our teacher, and we are definitely not supposed to be correcting our fellow students.  Think about this: we are students of the ultimate expression of wisdom (some would even say we are students of Wisdom herself); so how can we even know more than the teacher?

We are called to desire to continue in our learning and our application of our learning.  But the only way that will work is if we put aside all evils around us.  And, in this passage, evils are things that separate us from one another.  Being students requires us to make the classroom into a community of love, support, friendship, and help.   That's how we will be able to apply what we learn, as well.  We are learning how to live with one another to build up the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  When we start to apply all the love, all the acceptance, all the understanding that Christ teaches us, we will grow into greater beings.

Day 095: Measures

"Judge not, and you shall not be judged.  Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.  Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom.  For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you."  Luke 6:37-38

Jesus gives us commands that are very direct and simple, yet we seem to forget them.

In a long sermon, Jesus tells us that we are going to face the results of all the things that we do in our lives.  In fact, the way that Jesus commands these things is similar to how God commanded them in the Old Testament - that all the commandments are there so that things would go well in the lives of those who obeyed.  When Jesus makes these commands, though, he explains them very simply.

Many times, we live our lives as if we were still children.  We don't think about how the things we do will affect all of those around us.  Now, many of us will say that we already take many factors into consideration, but when we reevaluate things, we might find many more factors that we could be affecting.  Maybe there is that one person we take for granted: we can trample all over her/him, but we forget that our actions will come right back to us.  That's where the above commandments come into play.

It's impossible for us to take every single person that we will ever encounter into account.  I just learned that the human brain can only maintain around 150 relations with other humans on average.  So what's the solution?  Just think about how you want things to come back to you.  Take all of your criticisms that you would make towards others and apply them to yourself.  Do you hate reading typos in articles?  Then start thinking about what care you should take in your own work.  Do people annoy you for not arriving on time?  Then make sure that you will never have any issues with timing and scheduling. 

One more verse I want to consider today is this: "A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher."  (Luke 6:40)  A word that seems fleeting is "perfectly".  We think that just by listening to sermons at church or reading the bible will save us.  Jesus is training us.  Jesus is teaching us.  However, his teachings all involve an important point: you have to do them.  The above commandments are all commands.  They involve the second person - the you.  Therefore, let's all remember that Jesus calls us into action.  Jesus is calling us all to put all of his teachings into practice.  We can only train ourselves perfectly if we practice perfectly.  It will be difficult, but when we take the time to evaluate how we do everything with respect to our own lives, we will be able to get closer to being just like Jesus, our teacher.

Day 035: Tests

So they answered Jesus and said, "We do not know."  And He said to them, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things."  Matthew 21:27

This is one of those passages where I say to myself, Jesus was pretty sassy.  The neat thing, though, is that there is no malice behind what Jesus says or does here.  The leaders are trying to test him, and Jesus makes them think anew.

Today, we have an issue with our pride.  With the availability of so many resources, we start to appoint ourselves as great leaders.  Some of us will just go far enough to answer questions during lunch or during down time at work or even before or after the youth group meeting.  However, some will go as far as becoming self appointed/ordained ministers.  We will take all of the matters into our own hands.

Yet, things start to fall apart when times get tough.  Jesus is there to keep us in check when we are going crazy.  Jesus, the man with all the wisdom and the most impeccable timing as an orator, is speaking to us constantly, always to encourage us.  However, Jesus encourages us to go in his direction.  He has a ministry that he has established a long time ago, and he is calling all of us to join him.  Through his earthly ministry, he taught us all that we need to know in order to be initiated in this journey.  However, just as he described in the Gospels, sometimes the journey isn't exactly what we want it to be.

We want for things to go just our way.  We want to have our names in big letters, removing the cross or Christ from our storefronts or billboards.  We want all the credit to go to us.  But, then Jesus will ask us, "Is this your goal, or ours?"  Indeed, we can pursue whatever we want to, but if we are not doing what Jesus is calling us to do, we will end up destroying ourselves.

So, what's the best way to ensure that we know what we are doing during the test?  Study!  The issue with the leaders in the above passage is that they were asked a question where they could only answer "we don't know" so they could keep up with their own beliefs.  We have the textbook, we have the methods, and we definitely have the means to pass our spiritual tests.  We just need to keep in constant conversation with our instructor, Jesus Christ.

Day 030: Our Teacher

"He will guide the gentle in judgment; He will teach the gentle His ways.  All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth for those who seek His covenant and His testimonies." Psalm 24:9-10 (25:9-10)

I remember that before the first day of the new semester, I would always wonder, "how's this teacher going to be?"  If it were one from whom I had already taken a class, I would wonder, "how would s/he teach this subject?"  I always had a question, and it wouldn't be until the semester was over that I would be able to determine how the teacher did.  It's not like I was exactly like the person from RateMyProfessor or another review of the like.  Each person learns differently, so I might like a teacher another hated.

Also, when it came to evaluating a teacher, a lot depended on how much work one put into the class.  Each teacher had a different workload, but the expectation was usually the same.  The people who had the more favorable thoughts about certain professors were usually the ones who did all the work.  And, further up, the teachers for courses designated for seniors or graduate students usually incorporated a certain level of discussion - the things the teachers taught were much more subjective in nature.  Of course, if a certain professor's interpretations or ideas were not in line with a student's, that student would probably dislike the professor.

When I read these verses, I thought about how we already have a syllabus laid out for us.  We know that God is our teacher, and God is a teacher that will never be late, absent, or ignorant.  God, the fountain of all knowledge and wisdom, will teach us God's ways.  Unlike all the other teachers we've had in the past, God is one who is tried and true.  We know of the goodness of God, and we know that God means well for us in all that we have to do.  God will challenge us, indeed, but God will also be there to walk beside us, to help us fill in the blanks, to guide us through our most difficult times, so that we will come to understand so many great things.  God is inviting us into the classroom, the one where we will learn all that we need to know.