If you think that once you become a teacher you are now a dispenser of knowledge, not a collector, you are sadly mistaken. To be truly a great instructor, you must be an avid learner for your entire life, always open finding and closing the gaps in your wisdom when you become increasingly aware of them.
Where we lived in the northeast, firemen all worked on a volunteer basis. For them to be able to serve well, a siren mounted in the middle of town would sound whenever there was a need for them to rush to the station. One summer, when my oldest son was about 3½ years old, we were working in our garden. The fence around the garden was about three feet tall, so I was inside the fence picking veggies and laying them outside the fence for my son to put into a wagon to take to the kitchen. Suddenly the fire alarm sounded, so as was our custom, we both stopped to pray for the firemen and the people they were going to help.
After prayer, we resumed our work (or so I thought). As I laid tomatoes over the fence, I noticed that the pile was building up, so I called my son to get back to work. After a while, I noticed that he was mumbling to himself, so I asked him what he was doing. “I’m still praying for the firemen!”
Now there is a saying that I learned when we moved from Pennsylvania Dutch country to the South that explains more than any other wording could the feeling I had at that moment. It was like God had just “hit me up alongside the head”. (Or as my teenagers would have said “Duh, Mom … You didn’t get that?”)
What did I learn from this experience? That my son had a much more devoted prayer life than mine? Well, yes, that also. But even more – that I needed to learn from him, not only he from me. The parent/teacher is ever a learner, and anyone (even a child) can be the teacher. We need to remember what Paul said to Timothy (in I Timothy 4:12), “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young; but be an example to the other believers …” (Suzi’s paraphrase). It is the depth of understanding that makes the teacher, not the physical age.
A Bible verse that always caused questioning in my mind was I Timothy 2:15 which begins, “Not withstanding she [Eve] shall be saved in childbearing, …” (KJV). How am I to understand that process when we know that we are saved through faith in Christ’s atoning blood? It all relates to the meaning of “childbearing”. The Hebrew meaning of that term included the length of time from conception to adulthood, not just the birth process.
In Genesis 3, Eve’s punishment in the Garden of Eden was that God would “greatly multiply [her] sorrow and [her] conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, …” (KJV). Her entire life’s work as the mother of all humans, raising her children, would now be sorrowful. The same word, sorrow, is used for Adam’s punishment in his life’s work of being a gardener to supply for his family. When you use the word pain, it seems to apply to the physical birth, but sorrow refers to the emotional, psychological, and situational difficulties that come with raising children. We learn in our daily lives with them all through the years they are growing and maturing.
Do not think that you have to know everything in the realm of human understanding to be the parent; learn from your children. And let them know when you do. It will give them a sense of self-value and encourage them to know that you also are still learning.
~Suzi
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