As I go through old blog posts waiting for Anne and the kids to arrive for the midweek Lenten feast, I stumbled upon this from Pr. Petersen: What the Teacher Wants
There are two forms of flattery to which I have almost no resistance: laugh at my jokes or be kind to my children. If you laugh at my jokes I will like you. But if you are kind to my children I will love you forever and forever.
All through the long night, I thought about the kindness of a particular teacher to our son John. She loves him and I love her for it. What she loves, and the reason she can look past all else, is his love of facts, of learning. He absorbs everything she gives. He thinks deeply about what she says. He wants it accurate and he listens when she talks. He holds her to a high standard. Thus, for all his faults, he is a superb student. And thus does he allow her to be that which she wants to be: a teacher, and she loves him for it.
Thus my thoughts in the night: what a teacher wants is love of learning, students who take and love what they are given. If you have this, they will look past all else. What pastors want is faith. What sons and husbands want is respect. What the police want is obedience. What librarians want is reverence for books. What wives want is faithfulness. And on down the line we go. We want to be what we are called to be and when we find those people who allow it, who reciprocate, who play their part, we love them for it.
How true this is. Virtue is not outside God’s desire either for us either. My sermon this evening suggests humility as one such virtue desired by God and imparted to us in our baptism. But I’ll let you read Pr. Petersen’s conclusion yourself: What the Teacher Wants. Be sure to catch the comments as well.
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- Education Normal
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- Horn+swoggled: Angry Children Strike Against VBS
- Equal Opportunity Lampooning