I’ve spent, what some might consider, a rather inordinate amount of time organizing some ideas into a presentation recently, and as I was working on that again today, I was very much overcome with joy as many “off-topic” thoughts flooded my brain. I hope that I can capture all of them here.
A bit ago, while working on that same presentation, I recalled how, in my childhood, one of my favorite things to do was to pretend to be a teacher to my younger siblings. I loved coming home from school and sharing what I learned with them, and I was lucky in that, for the most part, they were agreeable to being my students. In our home, there was a small, green chalkboard that hung above an orange, wall-mounted telephone. I never minded struggling to reach that chalkboard as I wrote math problems on it, and I can remember writing out, by hand, math worksheets and spelling lists and other “assignments” to have my siblings work on. I’ve loved being a teacher for as long as I can remember.
This next part will feel choppy, I’m sure, because I don’t want to lose what is in my head right now.
I love truth. I love the potential good that it can bring to people who embrace it and live by it. I love the transformative power behind it. I love the discovery of truth. I love the excitement and wonder I feel when I recognize something as truth. Truth doesn’t come by itself. It comes with implications, and those implications broaden my understanding just enough to become the foundation for even more truth. I love communicating truth to other people. It is a bittersweet experience. Unfortunately, it is mostly bitter, but the quality of the sweet is exquisite.
I know that God honors the search for truth when it is done for the express benefit of other people. It’s like a key that unlocks and opens a floodgate of revelation. It’s amazing how, in praying and asking to simply be a conduit of truth to others, you become the unintended beneficiary of so much truth! And it has to be that way, too, in order for it to work. Any sense of benefit to self has to fall by the wayside before you can expect the greatest outpourings of truth. This was something I put into practice all the time when I taught Sunday School. When a lesson just wasn’t “coming together,” I would specifically pray and ask the Lord to teach me what he wanted the class to learn, and invariably, he always taught me more, with greater clarity, than what I was ever able to communicate to the class, even when what was communicated was amazing.
Today, I was also amazed at the variety of ways in which someone can teach someone. I was thinking about several related concepts, and the many different ways in which I could order those concepts flashed across my mind. That happens a lot, actually, causing me to be a lot slower in the organization of my thoughts as I would like, but I’m so grateful that God has that creativity at his disposal. I’m sure that he has had to get very creative, very often, in order to teach someone like me.
I know that the desire to teach truth is a natural result of the love one has for other people. It can be so great that it consumes every other desire you might have.
God is love, and love is truth. God’s sons and daughters are born out of an acceptance of truth. They become his heirs through both their adherence and submission to truth. God is a teacher of truth, and any who would grow into his likeness will become the same.
Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding. (Proverbs 4:1)
Truth is a Father, and if you would become a Father, you must live, and then teach, truth.