Unless you are a teacher or in a field like it, you don't understand how tough this time of year can be. I've been teaching now for over 14 years and this is ALWAYS my toughest season. We've been in school long enough to start to get on each others nerves and the weather is changing so the kids get restless, there ALWAYS seems to be a full moon, and thoughts of Halloween and candy are beginning to hit the stores and imaginations of children in every classroom. It is always at this time of year that I begin to wonder why in the world I went into teaching in the first place!
After many years of dealing with kids bouncing off the walls, parents who are exhausted because they've been working and playing taxi driver and homework helper for a few too many weeks, and first report cards looming on the horizon, I have learned that if I can just hang on till mid November, it will all get better. Candy will be gone, some sports have slowed down, kids are finally realizing they actually have to DO the work to get the grade, and we all have Thanksgiving and Christmas to look forward to.
This season shouldn't surprise us, but it always does - perhaps because it can be so wearisome. You see, teaching, like so many other professions, is a seed-planting industry. At first each year, we must break up the fallowed (fallow: 1. Plowed but left unseeded during a growing season: as in fallow farmland. 2. Characterized by inactivity) ground. This alone is hard work. Students have spent all summer having fun. (I joke and tell my students I just know they rushed home after pool parties all summer so they could diagram sentences!) We have to loosen up the soil again, remove the thorns that have cropped up, and get them ready for planting once again.
Next we begin to plant the seeds and we wait. Right about now we are exhausted from all that "breaking up" and the "thorn removal" and we've put in the seeds for the first crops, but all that is staring back at us is dry earth. It takes an act of faith to believe that in the future, a harvest will come. But we're already tired. Did I forget to mention that we are those parents who are pulled between work and practices and helping with homework at night, too?
Teachers plant and plant and plant, then water, weed, and tend...but before we can truly see the harvest, the year is over and the students move on up to another who will tend what we have planted and plant a little more. (If this doesn't make you want to go hug a teacher, I don't know what will!)
But we have a promise from One who never lies. We will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:9-10 (MSG)
So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.
So to all my teacher friends out there. Don't give up. God sees your work and He is in charge of the reward.....We work for Him and He can be trusted to do what He said He would do.
Don't give up my friends...November is on its way.
Galatians 6:9-10 (MSG)
So let's not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don't give up, or quit.
So to all my teacher friends out there. Don't give up. God sees your work and He is in charge of the reward.....We work for Him and He can be trusted to do what He said He would do.
Don't give up my friends...November is on its way.
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