Grace in the Wilderness

Thus says the LORD: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; when Israel sought for rest, the LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. (Jeremiah 31:2-3 ESV)

Weary in Well-doing

I would have gone; God bade me stay:
        I would have worked; God bade me rest.
He broke my will from day to day,
        He read my yearnings unexpressed,
                And said them nay.

Now I would stay; God bids me go:
        Now I would rest; God bids me work.
He breaks my heart tossed to and fro,
        My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk
                And vex it so.

I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me;
        Day after day I plod and moil:
But, Christ my God, when will it be
        That I may let alone my toil
                And rest with Thee?

~Christina Rossetti

There is grace in the wilderness. Even though we may feel like the waves just keep coming and we can't fight the undertow anymore, there is grace. 

Weary in Well-Doing

Ego-centrism and Teaching

Ruined by Knowledge--How ego-centrism affects teaching.

Future Self

The Psychology of Your Future Self: Dan Gilbert

Fascinating talk on how our projection about how much we will change is very very wrong. Great video to use in guidance.

Authentic Humility

"[A]uthentic humility is simply an attempt to see ourselves as we really are. Applied to our thinking, this means an uncompromisingly honest appraisal of the capacities and limitations of our minds against the standard of an all-knowing, infinitely intelligent and always true God. This reality check can be simultaneously heartening and sobering.

According to the Bible, we are created in God's image. This means that we are born as rational and creative beings with capacity to find and apply truth. This should be a source of immense encouragement to us. However, Scripture and reality both teach that our minds are also finite and tainted by the effects of sin, giving us good reason to approach both out own reasoning and the knowledge of others with a healthy degree of skepticism."

Philip E. Dow, Virtuous Minds: Intellectual Character Development

Shadow Comforts

"Are my choices comforting and nourishing my spirit, or are they temporary retrieves from vulnerability and difficult emotions ultimately diminishing my spirit? Are my choices leading to my Wholeheartedness,  or do they leave me feeling empty and searching?"

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

"Smallness of Soul"

"[R]eading Thomas Aquinas (1224-74) on the virtue of courage, I happened across a vice which he called pusillanimity, which means 'smallness of soul.' Those afflicted by this vice, wrote Aquinas, shrink back from all that God has called them to be. When faced with the effort and difficulty of stretching themselves to the great things of which they are capable, the cringe and say, 'I can't.' In short the pusillanimous reply on their own puny powers and focus on their own potential for failure, rather than counting on God's grace to equip them for great work in his kingdom--work beyond anything they might have dreamed of for themselves." 

Rebecca Kronyndyk DeYoung, Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins

Another example of the need for Christians to dare greatly through the power of the grace of Christ.

Jesus is my Redeemer

"But is Jesus my therapist or my Redeemer? If he is my therapist, then he meets my needs as I define them. If he is my Redeemer, he defines my true needs and addresses them in ways far more glorious than I could have anticipated.
If Jesus is my therapist, he is the One who comes to affirm me. Instead of trying to love ourselves, we think about how much Jesus loves us. This approach is deceptive because it latches onto a very powerful aspect of the gospel: God does shower his love upon us in Christ! Everyone who reads the Bible knows this. But this approach subtly turns Jesus into the One who meets my needs and fills my emptiness--as I define them. It turns God's love into something that only serves me. Repentance for our rebellion and sin against God is minimized or even ignored while God's love for us is maximized. We turn Jesus into someone whose goal in life is to make us feel good about ourselves."

How People Change Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

What's really down there?

The problem of isms

"When the gospel is reduced to a catalog of isms where I choose the one most attractive and comfortable for me, I can participate extensively in Christianity without much personal sacrifice, and with my self, unchallenged, at the center of it all."

Examples: Formalism, Legalism, Mysticism, Activism, Biblicism, "Pyschologyism," "Socialism"

"These isms also appeal to our environmentalism. We tend to believe that the sin that surrounds us is more dangerous than the sin that resides inside us. This is why it is hard for a husband to understand that he can't blame his coldness on his wife, more can the wife blame her bitterness on her husband, more can their child blame his rebellion on his parents' failures."

How People Change Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

The Gospel Gap

"The gospel gap in many of our lives doesn't stay empty either. If we do not live with a gospel-shaped Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that hole will get filled with other things. These things may seem plausible and even biblical, but they will be missing the identity-provision-process core that is meant to fill every believer."

How People Change Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

I call this the God-shaped hole--to me this is more accurate. We need God--Christ is the gospel!

Effects of Our Identity in Christ

"Without an awareness of Christ's presence, we tend to live anxiously. We avoid hard things and are easily overwhelmed. But a clear sense of identity and provision gives us hope and courage to face the struggles and temptations that come our way."

How People Change Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence."(2 Peter 1:3, ESV)

Identity

"[E]ach of us lives out of some sense of identity, and our gospel identity amnesia will always lead to some form of identity replacement. That is, if who I am in Christ does not shape the way I think about myself and the things I face, then I will live out of some other identity.
Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities."

How People Change Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

Use of Talents

The Parable of the Talents
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that placethere will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Something new struck me about this parable today. The master gives out the talents, giving more to those who have the ability to use them, and expects them to use them. However, what suddenly came into my mind, was that the master doesn't tell the servants what to do with their talents. Yes, he expects the servants to use them, develop them in some way, and show a profit at the end, but he doesn't tell them how. There's a wide open door here, which really opens up a lot of possibilities for how we view our students and their gifts.

Using your gifts and talents is not necessarily only about sharing them with others, for example, having a gift for things musical. Just because you have a lot of talent for piano or singing or violin or. . . doesn't mean that this must be the focus of your life. You may have other talents that also need development, and your music may be one of the ways you learn the various skills that will benefit you in these other areas as well. Just because you have a lot of talent in one area or another, doesn't mean you must spend your life on it. That might mean stunting the growth of other talent areas in your life.

The unworthy servant doesn't do anything with his--doesn't even put it in the bank so it collects interest (develop it in a minor way--taking piano lessons, for example) and this is why he is cast out. It's the fact that he didn't do anything with it at all that is the problem. Not using what you have been given, but squandering it or hiding it in the ground is the sin here. Our talents are gifts from God--His property, loaned to us until His return--and it is our responsibility to steward and develop them for His glory. He has given us the talent, but how we develop it is primarily left up to us--as long as we are developing them in God-honouring and glorifying ways, we are doing His will.

Personal Qualities Not Measured by Tests

Just a reminder for myself that I need to be making this clear to my students. The marks we give are not a mark for who they are, but for what they've done. Marks do not define the person.
This is also part of Daring Greatly--developing the above qualities--this what it is to be human.

Are we fostering some of the above qualities? Perhaps, but perhaps not for the right reasons. Students might develop self-discipline out of fear of failure. They might be reliable because they are afraid if they aren't, they won't be loved.

I struggle a lot with the feeling that schools are too much like factories. We don't allow the students to develop and learn in a natural way, but we push them through the system. You have to complete the curriculum, do the tests, report on their progress, do the exams, and pass them on to the next tier.

It doesn't feel like there is room  in high school for pursuing personal interests and going deep into topics that the students engage with. I wish there was a course that could just be individually-focused and -directed. Like a full year ISU, but the students would be self-directed and able to explore pathways of interest as they come up. They could write journals/blogs and do presentations and write essays and make videos, etc. and these would be used to assess them. It would be like grad school, I guess, where they would defend their "thesis" --the body of work they create-- at the end.
Maybe it wouldn't work for everyone, maybe there would be too much leeway and some people would be lost without guidelines. That, I guess, would be where their mentor/teacher would come in--to provide structure if necessary.
Maybe this is just an INTP dream. . .

Just some things running through my brain at present.

Daring Greatly by Paul

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." Hebrews 12:1-3 ESV

The Man in the Arena

Hope

"Hope is a function of struggle. If we want our children to develop high levels of hopefulness, we have to let them struggle." 

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Hiding behind Masks

Behind my hands

my face lurks

tentative, scared, scarred.

Laughter is its shield

quivering in the silence,

every nerve jangling, shaking.

True expression is dangerous;

it is too real, too exposing,

too naked me:

one should never be without clothes (it's unnatural).

Childhood freedom?

Gone with every don't and shouldn't.

I have my faces

each used on different occasions,

some serving more than one purpose:

Not all truth.

I confess that I have a problem with perfectionism. I never really realized/admitted it until just recently.

I am loathe to put anything out into the world that is not perfectly crafted and complete. I'd rather abandon something if I can't do it right. I'd rather not even try if I'm just going to fail. If I'm going to put something out there, I'm definitely not going to leave holes for people to poke their fingers into, places where they can poke and prod at my self-worth.

That is what perfectionism is about a lot of the time. It's about maintaining my armour, keeping up the facade, wearing the "everything is okay" mask. Don't show weakness. Don't give an opportunity for people to hurt you, the real you, the one you hide behind the perfectionism. Our outside self is so carefully crafted. If we don't find this out in childhood, we find out soon afterwards. It only takes one bad experience to start us hiding.

It has taken me a long time to get to the point where I am willing to take risks with my self. When I enter into a relationship, it's a risk. When I publish a blog post, it's a risk. When I share something important to me, it's a risk. And all these risks affect my self-confidence, self-worth, self-acceptance. They shouldn't make such a difference, but they do. My first impulse is always to hide. I'll hide behind a mask of self-confidence if I don't have anything else. The problem is, if that mask is challenged, it will become harder and harder to maintain the facade. Behind it, I get more and more paranoid about keeping the mask intact. But you can't really live fully behind the mask. Eventually it will crack and crumble, or else you will. . .

Fake it till you make it doesn't really work in the long term, not if involves denial of self and identity. And who then am I apart from these masks I hide behind?