Prayer: Dear Lord, as I approach today or any day, thinking about what needs to be accomplished, help me to settle my anxieties and center myself in you. Let me breathe in and breathe out these words. Your "grace is sufficient for me" (2Cor. 12:9). I know if I truly believe that knowing how overly abundant your grace is, I will walk through my days buoyed by that race, not weighed down by the cares of any given day. Amen.
Devotion: As the week turns me toward a new month, my mind is filled with planning, the start of new activities, and of projects which have now become due. As it is the beginning of not only the secular academic year but of the sacred academic year of Sunday School, Confirmation, and Bible Studies, I have needed to ponder the role of the teacher and the act of teaching; and the role of the student and the act of learning. As a teacher in both worlds, reflection is critical on these topics. While carried out in some form or another all summer long, the conclusions based on reflection become more pointed as summer ends because it is the conclusions from those reflections that will guide the planning and the assessment process. Assessment activities should not be designed until I have decided what it is I am teaching and what it is I want to observe as learned.
The teacher King David wrote Psalm 119 to teach his son Solomon the alphabet (abc's) and also a way to learn about God and how to live within God's law. The fifth stanza includes what we might call the alphabet E (verses 33-40) begins "Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end (or the appropriate rewarding outcome)." As a teacher, David is teaching Solomon (1) who to ask for help, (2) what help to ask for, and why this teaching should be requested. Ask Yahweh for help. Ask Yahweh to teach the ways of God's laws, statutes, decrees, rules, principles. Ask Yahweh to teach His principles so that they can be followed to their rightful conclusion. The rightful conclusion spelled out throughout the Psalm is being in a state of blessedness.
It is undoubtedly a simplistic teaching pattern, but it is this simplicity that makes the lesson easy to learn, memorize, practice, and embody. Would that all teachings were so clear and so precise! I can well imagine that this way of teaching that raised the type of man who would ask God for wisdom when offered anything. I could go into David's harmful teachings and those effects, but I will leave that for another devotion.
God teaches us through the written word, through the spoken word of prophets, ministers, teachers, parents/guardians, friends, neighbors, and members of our worshiping community. God also taught and teaches us through modeling, whether it was through the life of Jesus or his disciples or those listed in the earlier sentence.
We are all teachers, whether we want to admit it or not. Ask yourself this week; what am I teaching by my words, activities, or lifestyle? What am I learning from those around me? Is there anything I should change so that the end product is being in the state of blessedness?
Prayer: Lord, there are many paths offered to me. Help me to hear and to embody the teaching that will lead me to your blessed side. Amen.
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