We hope you were blessed during our recent Parent-Teacher Conferences to experience not only the wisdom of our teachers but also their hearts for your children. In this Classical Education Corner post, we follow Mrs. Bodine’s August in-service devotional with Dr. Stevens’s. It’s a lovely reflection on the calling of teachers to be both “vassals and vessels of the King” and a good message for us all as we begin our focus on the virtue of Humility.
Thank you to Michele for asking me to lead devotions this morning, and for everyone who has helped me, a displaced middle-aged academician, to feel at home here in the Trinitas fold. Sometimes you don’t know how much you value something until it’s taken from you, and that’s how I felt a year ago at this time regarding the loss of day-to-day collegiality of the teaching life. But starting last January, I felt a very tangible return of that comradeship here at Trinitas—and that is a cause for gratitude from me to all of you. I’d like to especially thank Robb, who gave me free use of a table in the back of the 7/8 room, where I could lay out, or rather spill out, my menagerie of notebooks, workbooks, lunch bags, and baseball caps. Thanks, Brother.
With all that being said, and earnestly so, I want to range around to our devotional topic, which is discomfort and disorientation. Perhaps it is just me, though I suspect it’s more widespread, but late August has always brought with it a certain degree of educator’s angst. Am I really prepared for what is about to inexorably arrive? (By the way, IEW training affirms splitting infinitives for stylistic necessity!) Do I know the material well enough? Have I spaced the writing assignments strategically, for the sake of student survival and my own survival? Did I get enough of the purple polyester folders? (I think so). Have I added the new printer? (I don’t think so.) Will I give each student exactly what he or she needs to thrive, in the midst of the daily hurly-burly of prep and delivery and assessment and loose ends and wild cards and variables and the general chaos (much ameliorated by grace) of the human condition? These and other questions—some more frightening to me, like “wait, is this Thursday?” or “Did I just assign the same reading again?”—circle like hawks, or maybe at times like buzzards, as I try to get ready for another year, my 31st as a teacher—shouldn’t’ I have this mastered by now?
Okay, just when this seems to threaten an avalanche of ill-timed doubts, I remember that I got into this realm because I wanted to serve the Lord through helping to shape the minds and imaginations and characters of young people. I’m a servant; we are all thankfully vassals and vessels of the King and hence can only perform in this role by surrendering our will and desires to His. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve resonated more fully with scriptures that once perplexed me—“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
I suppose it’s not so strange that these verses echo more and more the longer we journey and toil and teach, the more we realize that we are inadequate to carry out the full measure of this role, but also that Christ is so adequate, uber adequate, and we are privileged to be used by Him. George Herbert, a 17th c. mystic poet, knew this. We can see it in his poem, “The Windows.”
Lord, how can man preach thy eternal word?
He is a brittle crazy glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
More reverend grows, and more doth win;
Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.