In Gennesaret

“Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful. Stop for a moment and let that sink in. We’re so used to evaluating everything (and everyone) by their usefulness that this thought will take a minute or two to begin to dawn on us. Nature is not primarily functional. It is primarily beautiful .” ( John and Stasi Eldredge, Captivating) Well, that statement took me aback. It lingered in the back of my mind all morning, through church and lunch and finishing my lesson plans and even percolated a while back there during a short catnap. I finally put the dog on a leash and went out to talk to God about it in the expansive plot of nature behind my house. Nature that is exceptionally beautiful, I admit. But is it “primarily” beautiful? Is that its primary purpose? Because my science teacher colleagues have enthusiastically demonstrated to me over the years how God has skillfully and wonderfully made all of his creation to work together in harmony. Everything is functional. E...

People, we are stunningly close to the end of the school year. It’s April 23 rd . My last actual instructional period with my students is May 11th. I give my last semester final on May 18th. My last teacher workday for the semester is May 21st. That's less than a month away.  Summer is in sight, brothers and sisters. And beckoning me with sweet promises of rest and release. Although I don’t really take the summer off. As middle school department head, I actually have some duty days in June and July. Plus, summer is when I have the time to remember why I teach what I teach and re-think how I want to teach it all. But I don’t really complain about working over the summer because I like that stuff. I’m a big picture person; I like having the time and space to back up and get the wide-angle perspective on what I’m doing and then focus back in on the areas where I want to improve. Nevertheless, I still end up with a lot of “free time” over the summer. Well, usually. Last summer ...

Recently, I had my 8 th grade students responding to self-selected quotes from the book I Am David . I love this book; so do most of my students. The protagonist has grown up in a communist concentration camp and knows nothing about his own background or about the “real world”. But his limited life experiences have instilled in him a strong (yet somewhat misguided) sense of justice and morality, which is demonstrated in this quote from David that one of my students pulled from a chapter: “You must hate what is bad.” And here was my 8 th grader’s reaction: “This is a good example of trying to stay pure with the mistake of accepting hate as a good thing.” (Y’all. This boy is thirteen .) I usually fly through these assignments as I grade, but this remark stopped me dead in my tracks. It made me think. I should have given him extra credit for that. “ Trying to stay pure . . .” I’ve lived a whole lot of life with friends from the extreme fundamentalist limbs of the body of Ch...

  Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?” (Mark 16) These are “the women”, you remember. They’re on their way to Jesus’ tomb to anoint the body because after the crucifixion Friday night, it was too late to do that with the Sabbath starting. They’re off to do the work, like women do. And fully aware that there is a giant obstacle standing in the way of that work. A stone covers the opening to the tomb where Jesus’ body is laid. A HUGE stone – so big it would require several men to move it, and the ladies are fretting a bit on the way there about what could be done. Folks, I’ve had huge stones like this in my life. Giant obstacles far beyond my capability to remove, standing right in the middle of the road God had sent me down, right smack dab in the way of what I felt like he had called me to do. I can relate to these women. I’ve got...